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FAMILIAR FACES
Stories of People You Know
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FAMILIAR
FACES
Stories of People You Know
by
MARY ROBERTS RINEHART
FARRAR & RINEHART, Inc.
NEW YORK
TORONTO


UL
COPYRIGHT, 1916, 1933–1934, 1937, 1938, 1940, 1941,
BY MARY ROBERTS RINEHART
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY THE FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY, NEW YORK
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED


Marins
l'aur'
8.781
43811
Contents
PAGE
107
I ONE HOUR OF GLORY
II THE YOUNG VISITOR
III THE DOG IN THE ORCHARD
IV THE PHILANDERER'S WIFE
V ONE NIGHT IN SPRING
VI The Door That Would Nor Stay CLOSED
VII THE EMPIRE BUILDERS
VIII LILY COMES HOME at Last
IX DOROTHY DRESSES FOR DINNER
X Mr. Caswell Looks OUT THE WINDOW
XI MR. COHEN TAKES A WALK
137
161
219
243
259
277





One Hour of Glory





ONY was rather amused when he received the letter
from Grandfather Rogers. It was sent to him at the
State Department, where Tony was something or other
in a division called Protocol; that is, he helped the governors of
states to lay wreaths hither and yon, and even now and then
had appeals from frantic hostesses who had made a mistake in
an important dinner party.
“But you can't ask an ambassador and the Chief Justice to
gether," Tony would say. “They rank the same."
“How are they ever to meet, if they can't go to the same
dinner?”
"They don't meet," Tony would reply cheerfully. “That's
what keeps the Supreme Court free from foreign influences.
Better get sick, Mrs. Jones. It can't be done.”
All in all, Tony had his place in a great democracy. Aside
from that, he was a cheerful young man, who wore a morning
coat and top hat quite well, could hold a teacup in one hand
and a piece of chocolate layer cake in the other without disaster,
had been married for some years to a pretty and highly social
young woman named Muriel, and had the usual if vague hope
for a foreign post. An ambition which, to tell the truth, was
largely Muriel's.
It is hardly surprising, then, that Muriel was not amused at
the news.
“Look," Tony said. “We're going to have a visitor, darling."
"Not Aunt Emma," wailed Muriel. “I couldn't bear it, Tony.
I really couldn't.”
“Not Aunt Emma," said Tony. “It's my Grandfather Rogers.”
S


FAMILIAR FACES
"Grandfather Rogers?” she said vaguely. "I thought he was
dead or something." Then the thing burst on her in full force,
so to speak. “Good heavens, Tony, that one! He must be a
hundred.”
"He's in his nineties; but I gather from his letter that he's
still pretty spry.”
Muriel looked at him helplessly. "In his nineties!” she said.
“What on earth am I to do with him? I can't nurse him. In the
very middle of the season, too. You've got to put him off, Tony.
You've got to. We're out almost every night. And I don't like
old men. At the best they talk too much, and at the worst
they're deaf as a post.”
“Not Grandfather Rogers, even if he is ninety-six,” said Tony
calmly. “Now listen to me, my girl. He's the last relative I've
got, and he's making a sort of pilgrimage. He wants to see
Father's grave and Harry's, over in Arlington. And he wants to
see Washington, where he camped in 'sixty-three, and hasn't
been since. And I think, incidentally, that he wants to see me.
I'm the only one he has left.”
Muriel brightened slightly. She was not mercenary; but
Tony's job did cost money-clothes and cars and dinner parties,
and so on. “Has he anything to leave you?" she inquired with
interest.
"My rapacious darling!" said Tony fondly. “No, he hasn't.
He has his pension and a small farm. I used to go there when I
was a kid. He's rather a grand old boy; but all you'll get out of
him will be some eggs and butter. He'll probably bring them
with him."
Which was precisely what Grandfather Rogers did bring
when Tony met him at the station. At first Tony did not know
him. He had remembered a tall, elderly figure, erect and sol-
dierly, with a full set of quite dreadful white-porcelain teeth.
As a matter of fact, had it not been for the teeth, Tony might


ONE HOUR OF GLORY
have passed him by. But he caught a glimpse of them as they
got out of the day coach, and found a cheerful but very old
man more or less behind them. He still stood erect, but he had
shrunk. There was, however, nothing senile about the faded
blue eyes of Grandfather Rogers.
“I expect you're Tony," he said, in a cracked but not feeble
voice. “Wait till I say good-bye to the conductor. He's a nice
fellow. Had a father in my old regiment.”
He left Tony for a moment and shook hands with the con-
ductor. "Look me up while I'm here, Ed,” he said. “This is my
grandson. He'll be glad to see you."
"Thanks. Maybe I will. Have a good time.”
Tony gave a quick thought to Muriel and then, so to speak,
tossed her overboard. For it was evident that Grandfather
Rogers had, in the course of the last eight hours, made a good
many friends. They crowded around him, and when he was
finally extricated, Tony was clutching an ancient suitcase, and
Grandfather Rogers had a large basket covered with a napkin.
"If it's not too far, we can walk,” he said. “I'd like to stretch
my legs.”
Tony chuckled. “It's quite a way,” he said. “Anyhow, I've
got my car here."
But getting Grandfather Rogers out of the station was still
not simple. He stopped at the locomotive and looked up at the
engineer in the cab.
“Made a good run, son,” he said. “Right on the minute, too."
The engineer put a finger to his peaked cap in salute.
"Glad you liked it,” he said, and smiled. .
Tony gave the old suitcase to a porter; but they were still not
ready to go. At the entrance to the station Grandfather Rogers
stopped and gazed toward the Capitol. It was dusk by that
time, and the great dome rose, white and luminous, straight
across the plaza. It was always impressive, even to Tony. He
act


FAMILIAR FACES
Sam.”
turned to the old man, to find him standing at salute. But when
he spoke, his voice was matter-of-fact enough.
“Looks like the place is changed some since I saw it in 'sixty-
three," he said casually. “Brought some eggs and butter.
Thought your wife might like them. Every woman likes fresh
eggs to cook with. Some of them were warm when I packed
them."
He eyed Sam, the chauffeur, rather suspiciously when he took
the basket. “Who are you?”
"I'm the chauffeur,” said that colored gentleman. “Name's
"All right, Sam,” said Grandfather Rogers. “You watch those
eggs. There's a heap of nourishment in them.”
Sam grinned, and Tony got the old man into the car. Seated,
he seemed almost small. He gazed out the car window, and
once he passed his hand over his eyes, as though the noise and
lights confused him. Almost all he said was to ask if Arlington
Cemetery was near.
"Thought I'd go and see the graves,” he said. “Won't see
them again, you know. I'm getting on."
"You look pretty husky for your age.”
“Well, I've seen a lot of living," he said, and lapsed into
silence.
Tony was a trifle anxious when they reached the house, and
Grandfather Rogers was obliged to relinquish the basket to
Henry, the butler. But Muriel was a good girl. She came into
the hall and kissed the old man on his withered cheek, and she
did not so much as blush when, his overcoat removed, he was
revealed as wearing a red-flannel chest protector, tied with
strings around the neck.
“Katie makes me wear it since I had pneumonia,” he ex-
plained. “Katie's my housekeeper. You'd think to hear her I
was getting childish in my old age.”
W


ONE HOUR OF GLORY
Muriel dutifully smiled; but she cast a rather desperate look
at Tony, who ignored it.
She had ordered the butler to serve tea by the fire in the
library, and she kept a determined smile on her face even when
Grandfather Rogers brought up the subject of the war. The
State Department did not talk about the war except behind
closed doors. But Grandfather Rogers, after eating everything
in sight-the teeth were at least useful—sat back, replete at last,
and brought the subject up.
"What's this mess in Europe, Tony? Are we going to get
into it?”
"Not if we can help it,” answered Tony carefully.
"Help it? How can we help it? If it keeps up, we'll go in to
stop it, because we can't stand any more murder. That's Amer-
ica, son."
"Well, perhaps it is,” said Tony pacifically. It was quite a
long time since he had considered what America really was, his
mind mostly having been turned to the happenings abroad.
Grandfather Rogers put down his third cup of tea and got
up. It was a slow process, but he made it.
“I guess maybe, if you don't mind, I'll go to bed,” he said.
“It's been a long day.”
"Bed?” said Muriel blankly. “Won't you want some dinner?
We're in tonight.”
“Dinner? Great Scott, what have I just had?"
“Tea," said Muriel, not looking at Tony, who was grinning
delightedly. "We always have tea at five o'clock. Dinner's at
eight."
"That's bedtime on the farm," said Grandfather Rogers, “but
I guess I'll make it.”
He did make it, but the evening was not a success. He seemed
slightly oppressed by Henry, the butler, and by the ritual of the
table. He looked away when Muriel lighted a cigarette, and


FAMILIAR FACES
some time after the meal he made the startling discovery that
she was wearing pajamas. After that he was careful not to look
at her legs. At nine-thirty he yawned, and Tony suggested bed
to him. He got up gratefully.
"See you at breakfast,” he said, and made a formal good
night, still avoiding Muriel's legs.
Muriel and Tony had quite a talk after he had gone. That is,
Muriel talked, and Tony listened. She said quite firmly that she
was willing to make the old man comfortable, but that he was
impossible otherwise.
"I'm thinking of your career, Tony,” she said. “He would
ruin it. If you are proposing to exhibit him around Washington,
I'll go to Aiken. That's flat.”
“What's the matter with him? He's a gentleman, even if he
doesn't like your pants," said Tony cheerfully. “As a matter of
fact, I hadn't thought of exhibiting him. He'd hate it."
On which truce of sorts they went to bed.
Grandfather Rogers was also in bed. His teeth were in a glass
of water beside him, and he lay in Muriel's guest bed under
Muriel's pink silk eiderdown comfort and felt extremely lonely.
When Henry, the butler, looked in later to see if he was all
right, Grandfather Rogers hailed him as a friend.
"Come in and sit down," he said. “I'd like to talk to you. Sit
down, man, I won't bite you. If you'll look at that glass on the
table, you'll see why.”
Henry gave a rather sickly smile. He sat down, although he
looked like a kangaroo ready to leap at the least alarm.
"I've been watching you tonight,” said Grandfather Rogers.
"Englishman, eh? Been a soldier, haven't you?"
"Most of my life, sir."
"Must seem queer to be passing plates, eh?"
Henry smiled. “It's better than starving,” he said.
Grandfather Rogers learned quite a lot about Henry that


ONE HOUR OF GLORY
night, including his possession of the Victoria Cross. The old
man was highly interested.
"I got a medal myself once,” he said, in his cracked old voice.
“Katie's got it tucked away somewhere. Never did me any
good that I can see.”
But he fell asleep quite suddenly in the middle of Henry's
retreat from Mons, and Henry put out the lights and raised the
window before he tiptoed out.
When Grandfather Rogers opened his eyes again, Henry was
standing by the bed, and the old man blinked at him.
"Sorry," he said. "Must have dozed off for a minute."
Henry smiled. “It's morning, sir. I've brought your break-
was
fast.”
Grandfather Rogers sat up in bed and looked. It was cer-
tainly morning, and there was a tray on a table. Moreover,
Henry showed every indication of placing it on the bed. Grand-
father Rogers eyed it indignantly.
“Great Scott," he said. “I'm not paralyzed, am I? You take
that down and tell the hired girl I've been up for my breakfast
ever since my mother weaned me. What time is it?”
He ate his breakfast downstairs that morning, to the annoy-
ance of the household. Also he went up later and made his own
bed, thus greatly embarrassing the chambermaid. When he
came down again, he found Muriel in the hall, dressed to go
out. She greeted him without enthusiasm.
"Tony wants you to have Sam and the car today,” she said.
"I do hope you can amuse yourself.”
"I thought I'd go to Arlington."
As this definitely was not amusement, Muriel felt uncom-
fortable. She was still more uncomfortable when Grandfather
Rogers, having donned his chest protector and old overcoat,
shook Henry's hand before leaving the house.
“Maybe you don't know it,” he said to Muriel, “but this
CON-


IO
FAMILIAR FACES
fellow here's got quite a war record. Get him to show you his
medal.”
Henry looked unhappy, but Muriel rallied and took it in her
stride. “You must do that sometime, Henry,” she said brightly.
“I had no idea you were a soldier."
The old man went out, leaving what amounted to domestic
chaos behind him. Henry apologized gravely.
“I'm sorry, madam,” he said. “The old gentleman seemed
lonely last night, and he wanted to talk. It won't happen again.”
And then something, which under the State Department
veneer was really Muriel, emerged and surprised her. “I under-
stand, Henry. I—I really would like to see your medal someday.
And I'm sure Mr. Rogers would, too."
Henry, however, was back, so to speak, in the Division of
Protocol. He merely bowed. “Thank you, madam," he said,
and called a taxi for her.
So Grandfather Rogers had the car that day. He sat in front
beside Sam and by and large Sam learned a good bit about the
Civil War. Also Grandfather Rogers learned a lot about Wash-
ington. They cruised first among the great stone buildings; but
Grandfather Rogers seemed unimpressed. Only at the Lincoln
Memorial, when Sam had helped him up the steps, he stood for
a long time gazing up with his old eyes into the tragic, kindly
face. Then he saluted, and, turning smartly, marched out
again. Sam was waiting, and the old man looked out over the
city.
“Wonder how he'd have liked it, Sam?” he said. “He wasn't
much for show."
He was a little tired and more than a little cold when they
reached the cemetery.
"I've got a son and a grandson here," he told Sam. “Tom
died of typhoid in the Spanish War, and they brought his boy
back from France and put him here, too. That was Tony's


ONE HOUR OF GLORY
II
brother. My wife died when that happened. She'd banked a lot
on Harry."
“Sure tough,” said Sam.
The old man was silent after that. He was seeing Millie when
the news came about Tom. She was sick, and he couldn't leave
her. But she had wanted Tom in Arlington, and so they had
buried him there. Millie had gone about like a ghost for months.
Then she had pulled out of it, although she never forgot. It was
Harry's death that had finished her. She'd fallen over with a
heart attack when the telegram came. ... Three graves, he
thought. That was what a man had left if he lived long enough.
Millie lay over the hill from the farm, and he had missed her
every day for more than twenty years.
He had some difficulty in locating his graves. He found
Tom's first and stood bareheaded beside it.
"Here he is, Millie,” he said. "If you can hear me, he's here,
and he's all right. Either he's busy somewhere else, or he's just
asleep. You know how he liked to sleep."
But he stood longer beside Harry's, among that marching
army of small white headstones. All these boys, he thought.
Young once and full of life, and now lying there lost, and men
and women still missing them. To what end? That he and
others like him should stand there on a winter hillside, at the
end of their lives and alone.
He was shivering when he went back to the car, and his
ancient legs were not too steady.
“Better go home, sir,” said Sam, tucking the rug about him.
"Kind of a strain, all this. And it's cold, too.”
But Grandfather Rogers wanted to see the Tomb of the Un-
known Soldier, and it was there that he first saw the Moselys.
Not that they were the Moselys to him then. They were merely
a boy and a girl, standing hand in hand, watching the sentry
on his endless patrol. It was the expression on their faces that
asleep. You knowonger beside Harry S. ece boys, he thought.


12
FAMILIAR FACES
caught his attention. They looked, he thought, like lost chil-
dren. They did not even speak until an elderly woman got out
of an old car, laid some carnations at the foot of the tomb, and
after standing a moment in silence, went away again. Then the
boy stirred.
“So that's war and glory," he said. “A bunch of flowers freez-
ing against a piece of marble.”
"It's more than that,” said the girl quietly. “To fight to save
the country—"
"If it's worth saving,” said the boy bitterly, and moved
abruptly away.
It upset Grandfather Rogers. They were too young for that
sort of thing. In their early twenties, probably-just the age
Harry had been when he went to France. When he got into the
car, he was shivering with cold, and Sam tucked him up care-
fully. The old man did not notice. He was gazing out over the
city across the river. Then, halfway down the hill, he saw the
young couple again. They were still hand in hand, and on an
impulse he stopped the car.
"How about a lift into town?” he inquired. “Kind of cold for
walking."
They hesitated, as though somehow kindness was unexpected.
Then the girl smiled and agreed. They got in, and he saw that
they were both thinly clad and pinched with cold.
“Thanks a lot,” she said. “What a nice car! I never expected
to ride in one like it.”
"It's not mine," said Grandfather Rogers hastily. “Belongs
to my grandson. I have an old one myself. Kind of willful, but
goes now and then.”
“We had one like that,” said the girl. “We sold it for twenty-
five dollars."
They were easier after that. They introduced themselves-
John and Margery Mosely—and said they were in town for only


ONE HOUR OF GLORY
13
a little while. Then for some reason they became silent, and
Grandfather Rogers saw the boy take the girl's hand under the
robe and hold it. But they accepted his offer of a hot drink at
a drugstore, and when they separated, Margery thanked him
nicely.
“You've been very kind,” she said. “When I saw you at the
Tomb, I thought you looked kind.”
He did not see them again for several days. He stayed on at
Tony's insistence, although he was often homesick for the old
familiar things of the farm. He was rather lonely, to tell the
truth. Both Tony and Muriel were busy, and even Henry re-
mained aloof. Grandfather Rogers, dining alone in state when
Tony and Muriel had gone out, would try to get him to talk.
“What's wrong with this country, Henry? Just as rich as it
ever was, isn't it? Got everything. What's the trouble with it?”
“I couldn't say, sir," Henry would reply. “Will you have
some more of the chicken?”
He filled his time as best he could. One day Sam took him to
Mount Vernon, and he was cheered to learn that George Wash-
ington had also worn false teeth, and had hated them as he did.
He made friends, of course. He made them everywhere. He
would talk in his friendly fashion to tourists, to streetcar and
bus conductors, to taxi drivers slapping themselves to keep
warm. Some of them called him “colonel,” and he would
straighten under his old overcoat and smile, showing his teeth
in all their perfection.
“Not a colonel, son, although I saw some fighting in my
time.”
They liked him. Sometimes he even took his lunch with
them, sitting on a high stool at a counter. Behind his back they
called him "Grandpap.”
"Took Grandpap to the Capitol today.”
“How'd he like it?”


14
FAMILIAR FACES
“He liked the statuary.”
That was a laugh. They had no illusions, especially the taxi
drivers. They had consorted too long with the great and near-
great. But behind the laugh was a sort of amused tender-
ness.
Then one day on the street he met John and Margery Mosely
again. They looked better, less pinched, and Margery had a new
outfit and looked very nice in it. Grandfather Rogers noticed it
at once.
“Well, bless my soul,” he said. “Here you are again. I see
you've been doing some shopping.”
There was a note of defiance in John's voice when he replied.
“She's had something coming to her for a long time,” he said.
“Anyhow, we're going away soon. I wanted her to have one
last fling.”
“Going home, eh?”.
“Yes,” said Margery softly. “Going home.”
He took them to the movies that afternoon, getting his money
out of an old-fashioned purse to do so. It was a comedy, and
they all enjoyed it. It did not occur to the old man that it was
their mutual loneliness that had brought them together; or that
they were three derelicts, washed up on the same shore until
some tide would separate them forever. So he was rather aston-
ished to see tears in Margery's eyes when they said good-bye at
the hotel where they were staying.
“Thanks,” she said. “Thanks a lot. And maybe we will see
you again-sometime.”
“Of course you will," said Grandfather Rogers. And because
for some reason he felt uneasy, he patted her on the shoulder.
“Have a nice time,' he told her. “You're both young, and
you've got each other. That's a lot to be thankful for.”
Then he left them and went on, his kind old face beaming
on all and sundry.


ONE HOUR OF GLORY
“Taxi, colonel ?”
“No, thanks, son. I'm stretching my legs a bit.”
“Looks like they're long enough already, colonel. I'm going
home anyhow. Maybe I can drop you. No charge.”
He was more cheerful that night. After all, in spite of its
troubles, America was a pretty friendly place. Tony had
brought him a new book, Heroes of Four Wars, and after he
and Muriel had gone out as usual, the old man tried to read it
by the library fire. But he was drowsy. The book fell to the
floor, and he slept.
The next day the weather changed. It had been cold and
sunny, as only Washington can be in winter. In the small circle
near the house children in long leggings and small, thick coats
had played, and Grandfather Rogers had regularly stopped to
watch them. At such times he wished that Tony and Muriel
had a child to carry on the name; but after a day or two of
observing Muriel's life, he saw that a child did not belong in it.
He would sigh and go on.
Then the snow came—a soft, wet snow, which took the latent
heat out of the air and left it raw and penetrating. For the first
time since his arrival the old man was housebound. He was
lonely and unhappy.
One day he wrote to Katie: “I am having a fine time. Tony
and his wife are taking good care of me, and I wear the chest
protector as per instructions, although I gather from Muriel's
face that she doesn't care much for it. Don't laugh, but they
have a butler here, and he helps me into my pants. Makes me
feel like a fool. They tried to feed me in bed, too, but I put an
end to that.
“This is a fine city, but I guess it cost the taxpayers of the
country plenty to build it. Well, easy come, easy go.
“Yours,
“Alexander Cameron Rogers.


16
FAMILIAR FACES
“P. S. Don't worry about my being lonely. I have made quite
a few friends, although I doubt if Tony's wife would care for
some of them.”
As events proved, Muriel did not. One day she gave a tea
for the wife of what Tony called his boss. She had been a long
time in getting that eminent lady, and all morning the house
was in a turmoil. Then at four o'clock she called Tony fran-
tically on the telephone.
“What am I to do?” she wailed. “He's all over the place, and
I simply can't have him around, Tony."
“Give him Sam,” said Tony. “He might like a drive.”
"I need Sam."
Tony grunted. “Well, it's your party," he said. “I don't sup-
pose any of your women would drop dead if they did see him.
They're a sturdy lot.”
Muriel banged down the receiver.
But she was relieved when at five o'clock Henry gravely re-
ported that Mr. Rogers had put on his overshoes and chest pro-
tector and gone out. She hurried into the library, hid Grand-
father Rogers's ancient pipe, emptied the ash tray, and raised
the window for a moment.
"You can bring those roses in now," she told Henry. “We
may not use this room, but I want the whole house to look
nice.”
The party was a great success. Everybody who was anybody
came. A long line of automobiles extended up and down the
street; Sam was on the pavement opening car doors; and best
of all, there was no sign of Grandfather Rogers. Then, prac-
tically one hour later, over the chatter of women and the click
of teacups, Muriel proudly showed her honor guest the lower
floor of the house.


ONE HOUR OF GLORY
“Such a nice house," said that great lady, with her tired
official smile. "How well you have done it.”
"It was a mess when we took it,” said Muriel, and threw open
the library door. The library, so to speak, was her tour de force.
It had, she considered, atmosphere. And certainly at the mo-
ment it had plenty of atmosphere. Muriel stood transfixed in
the doorway.
Standing in front of the fire was Grandfather Rogers who
had removed his overcoat but not his chest protector; and sit-
ting in a large handsome chair was what was unmistakably a
taxi driver. He was holding a glass of hot toddy, and as they
looked, he raised it.
“Well, here's to you, colonel,” the taxi driver said happily.
Muriel closed the door, and the great lady smiled, not so
officially.
"Such a nice room,” she murmured. “And thank you for the
party, my dear. I've really enjoyed it.”
Which she probably had, since she smiled-not officially,
most of the way home.
Muriel spent the evening sulking in bed, and Grandfather
and Tony had dinner together. The old man was happy. Tony
talked quite a little about Europe-not giving away any official
secrets, of course-but he had little to say about America.
"Now look, son," said Grandfather Rogers. “We used to
think this was a great country. Nothing we couldn't do. Now
the courage has gone out of us. What's the matter with us?”
But Tony's mind was on Europe, and on Muriel, in tears
upstairs.
"Europe's in a pretty mess," he said absently.
Grandfather Rogers said irritably: "Better forget it and get
busy about America. It's cost a lot to build and save. Go over to
Arlington someday, son. It might make you think.”


18
FAMILIAR FACES
Tony went so often to Arlington with quite a number of
important visitors that this left him unimpressed. He drew out
of his pocket an invitation to a White House reception, with
Grandfather Rogers's name written in to match the engraving,
and handed it to him. But the old man eyed it coldly.
"What for?” he said suspiciously. "I don't hold with that
fellow there, and I don't care if he knows it.”
Tony grinned. “You don't have to kiss him," he said. “Just
shake hands and move on. They'll have the Marine Band.
You'll like that.”
It was actually the band that decided Grandfather Rogers.
The next few days passed slowly for him. He went out one
day and was forcibly fitted with an evening suit for the great
occasion. And another day he saw the Moselys again. John had
a new overcoat; but for all their new clothes, they looked more
like lost children than ever. Before he could reach them, they
got on a streetcar, leaving him more puzzled than before. He
had a queer, apprehensive feeling that day, as though they had
gone for good; as though indeed, having picked them out of
nowhere, he had lost them there.
But he had not lost them.
It was the afternoon of the reception at the White House
when he realized that. Everything had been perfectly normal
up to that time. He had been out, spending some time standing
by the Grant monument near the Capitol. He thought it very
handsome, especially the horses, although he had never seen
General Grant, and his memory of that war had been mostly
of dirt and hunger and slogging along on foot. When he got
back, he found Henry hanging up the dress suit and putting the
studs in the stiff shirt. He sat down and eyed the outfit unfavor-
ably.
"I'll look like a black rooster in that,” he grumbled. “All tail
and no front.”


ONE HOUR OF GLORY
19
Henry ventured to smile. “That's the way I felt, sir, the first
time I wore one."
“When was that?” Grandfather Rogers inquired, interested.
“Thought you English were born in them.”
Henry hesitated. Then he said: “It was after the war, sir. I'd
saved a little, but it was almost gone. There were no jobs, and
medals were selling for ten shillings or less. So I decided to have
one last fling, as you might say. That's when I got the evening
clothes. I'd never had any before.”
Grandfather Rogers eyed him with interest. “And then
what?” he asked.
Henry looked apologetic. “You know how it is, sir. I was
young and pretty desperate. I had a good time for a week or so.
After that I meant-well, there was always the river, sir.”
But Grandfather Rogers was getting up out of his chair. He
had a quite dreadful look on his face.
“I'm a darned old fool, Henry,” he said, and marched out of
the room and out of the house.
When Tony, carrying a new dress tie, came home at six, he
looked into the library and found it empty. Muriel, of course,
was not in.
“Where is Mr. Rogers?” he asked Henry. “In his room?"
“No, sir. He left the house some time ago.”
"Good Lord,” said Tony, annoyed. “He knew he's going
out tonight, doesn't he?”
“Yes, sir, he knows, all right. The clothes are in his room. He
saw them.”
Tony ordered a whisky-and-soda and lighted a cigarette. He
was vaguely uneasy, but the old boy had seemed pretty capable
of looking after himself. When Henry brought his drink, how-
ever, he questioned him.
“Did he say where he was going?”
“No, sir. I was fixing his shirt, and—” Henry gulped—“I


20
FAMILIAR FACES
don't know what happened, sir. He acted as if he'd just remem-
bered something. He said he was a darned old fool, if you'll
excuse the expression.”
"Well, it's a darned nuisance, anyhow,” said Tony.
He was not really anxious. He smoked a cigarette and looked
at the paper, which was saying unpleasant things about the
Administration, as usual. But when he looked into the hall
closet to see the condition of his top hat, he saw Grandfather
Rogers's chest protector on the floor. He picked it up, and he
was still holding it when Muriel arrived.
"He's gone. And without this,” he said.
“Gone where? Home?” said Muriel hopefully.
"No. Just out, no one knows where. I've a notion to call the
police.”
“And get in the papers? Don't be silly. What could happen
to him?"
“That's what I intend to find out," said Tony grimly.
He did not call the police, however. He went up to the old
man's room first; but there was no clue there. The room itself
seemed mutely to protect him. It looked bare, as though the
old man's living in it had left little or no impression on it; as
though, indeed, great age asked little and required little. Except
for the hired evening clothes, which looked oddly out of place,
there were only a pair of worn hairbrushes, a small photograph
of his dead wife, a second suit of clothing in the closet, a few
undergarments, a toothbrush, and a tin of something to keep
false teeth from slipping. Tony surveyed the room with a sense
of guilt.
And he's had so little from us, he thought. A bed and food.
Good Lord, if anything has happened to him,
It was eight o'clock, and in spite of Muriel and the press,
Tony was calling the police, when Grandfather Rogers finally
returned. There was no excitement about his return. He simply


ONE HOUR OF GLORY
21
rang the doorbell, and Henry found him standing there. Henry
kept his relief out of his voice.
"We've been worried about you, sir,” he said. “Steady, sir.
Not sick, are you?”
He reached out and caught the old man by the arm; but
Grandfather Rogers shook him off.
"I'm all right,” he said testily. “I want to sit down, that's all.
I'm tired.”
It was there that Tony found him, looking weary and in-
credibly old, while Henry hovered over him.
"Sorry, Tony," he said slowly. “Just let me rest here for a
minute. I've been kind of busy.”
Tony eved him. He was pale, and the scar of an old bullet
wound stood out, livid, on his wrinkled face.
“Don't want to bother you, but do you care to talk about it?”
Tony asked.
“Not yet. Maybe later.”
Tony put an arm around the thin shoulders. “Better tell me,
old soldier,” he said. “Better get to bed, too. Henry and I will
take you up. No party tonight.”
But Grandfather Rogers shook his head, and this time he
smiled. “Can't waste that dress suit, can we? It would break
Henry's heart.”
An hour later they were on the way to the White House.
The drive was uneventful, except that outside the White House
Grandfather Rogers lowered a window and hailed a policeman
standing there.
“Hi, Bill,” he called in his cracked voice. "Got it all fixed.
Everything's hunky-dory.”
The policeman stared. He did not know the old man in his
finery. Then he grinned. “Good for you, colonel,” he said.
Tony, puzzled, mutely thanked his gods that Muriel was not
there, and the car drove on.


22
FAMILIAR FACES
If the White House and its pageantry impressed Grandfather
Rogers that night, he did not show it-the uniforms and for-
cign decorations everywhere, the brilliance of the Marine Band,
the clothes and jewels of the women as the line moved slowly
forward. And people looked at him, Tony noticed; at his erect
figure, his fine old head. Suddenly he was proud of him. He
was a fighter. They had all been fighters, his people. He and
his kind had fought for this country, and it still belonged to
them. Maybe he'd been forgetting that. Maybe a lot of people
had been forgetting it.
It was not until after Grandfather Rogers had shaken the
presidential hand that anything happened. Jammed into the
East Room, they came face to face with one of the Cabinet
officers, and the Secretary looked interested when he heard
Grandfather Rogers's name.
“Rogers?" he said. "I don't suppose you could be related to
Alexander Cameron Rogers?”
"That's my name, sir,” said the old man stiffly.
“Great Scott!” he said. “I was reading about you only today.
New book, Heroes of Four Wars. Had no idea you were still"
He coughed and turned to Tony. “Where's his decoration,
Tony? He's got the Medal of Honor. Ought to have worn it
tonight.”
Grandfather Rogers looked at him. "It was a long time ago,
Mr. Secretary,” he said. “Price of medals has gone down since.”
The Secretary looked bewildered. So did Tony. However,
the news passed through the room. People began to gather
around the old man. The circle grew. It became a crowd, and
the crowd almost a riot. But if it was Grandfather Rogers's
one hour of glory, he did not show it. Now and then he smiled,
showing his porcelain teeth, and when word came that the
President-who was upstairs by that time and probably in bed


ONE HOUR OF GLORY
23
-would like to see him the following day, he merely nodded
acquiescence.
“Got something to say to him," he said rather grimly.
But suddenly he looked very tired, as though the will power
that had carried him so far had all at once failed him. In the
midst of the ovation he turned to Tony.
“Get me out of here, son," he said.
That took time, however. They did not want to let him go.
More and more people came. The wife of Tony's boss was
among them, looking thrilled but also amused.
"I think we've met before, Mr. Rogers,” she said. “That is,
I've seen you.”
The old man looked blank; but the great lady glanced at
Tony and gave him what amounted to a grin.
“Imagine your hiding such a celebrity, Tony,” she said. “I
happened on him only by accident. At your house. You may
have heard about it.”
“And how!" said Tony, looking proud and excited
He got the old man outside by main force. But by that time
nothing astonished Tony, even when a taxidriver drove up to
receive a lady in a tiara, and Grandfather Rogers leaned out of
the crowd to call to the driver.
“How's the boil?” he inquired with interest.
"Fine," said the driver. “It busted today.”
So it did not surprise Tony to find that they were not going
directly home that night.
“I'd like to go to the railroad station, son,” said Grandfather
Rogers. “Won't take long."
“Somebody you know going away?”
In the darkness the old man smiled. “Yes. But not so far as
they expected. Two young people I happened to meet," he
added. “Couldn't get work and wouldn't go on relief. They


24
FAMILIAR FACES
sold what little they had and then came here for one last Aling.
It would have been, too, if it hadn't been for Henry."
"Henry?" said Tony, astonished. “What has Henry got to
do with it?"
"He said there was always the river," said Grandfather
Rogers mildly. “You might learn a little about the folks around
you sometime, son. They're likely to be interesting.”
“What about these young people?"
"They're all right. We found them on the bridge, that police-
man and I. Nice fellow, Bill. He's got five kids.” He leaned
back and yawned. “Anyhow, it's all fixed. They're going to
the farm tonight. They'll like it there. Plenty to eat and plenty
to do. There's a lot of room in this country still,” he added, and
yawned again.
Tony sat very still. He felt guilty. He and Muriel on their
everlasting frivolous round, and the old man going about alone
and getting close to the great common level of humanity. Even
his job-how important was it? What did it matter in a world
full of human anxiety and suffering?
He reached over and touched Grandfather Rogers's withered
old hand. “You're a grand guy," he said. “And a great person,
sir. I guess I've learned a few things tonight.”
He did not go into the station. He had a feeling that this
thing concerned only three people—two of them very young
and one incredibly old. But there was a new gentleness when,
on Grandfather Rogers's return, he carefully tucked the rug
about the old man's legs.
"Everything all right, sir?”
"Everything fine," said Grandfather Rogers.
He was very weary. His legs ached, and his hand where it
had been squeezed. Also his teeth bothered him. In the dark-
ness he took them out, wrapped them in a handkerchief, and
tucked them in the pocket of his tailcoat.


ONE HOUR OF GLORY
25
I *SUL.
"If I yelp, you'll know they've bit me,” he told Tony, and
in a moment he was fast asleep.
A week later he went home to the farm. It had been a big
week, with people calling to see him, including a foreign am-
bassador or two, an elderly member of the Supreme Court, and
practically the entire membership of the Army and Navy Club.
Muriel, on one occasion, heard him tell an ambassador about
his hired dress suit; but as the ambassador laughed heartily, it
was apparently all right.
Henry packed for him, and at the last moment Grandfather
Rogers, instead of shaking hands, gave him a military salute,
and Henry returned it stiffly.
“Good-bye, major,” said Grandfather Rogers. “And good
luck to you.”
“Good-bye, colonel,” said Henry, smiling. “I shall miss you,
sir.” They shook hands then, and Henry's back was straight
as he marched into the house.
Both Muriel and Tony took the old man to the train. Perhaps
Muriel had not expected that half the taxidrivers at the station
would gather around him to say good-bye, or that he would
shake Sam warmly by the hand before he left him. But Tony
was not surprised. Nor was he surprised when, on the way to
his car, the old man went forward to the engine and looked up
at the engineer in the cab.
“How've you been?” he said affably.
"Pretty good. How'd you like the big town?"
“All right,” said Grandfather Rogers and went back to his
car.
It took some time to get him settled on the train, however.
This time he was traveling by Pullman; but he had to look
up Ed first. Ed greeted him warmly.
"Well, I suppose you saw the President,” he said, grin-
ning.


26
FAMILIAR FACES
“Saw him! Suffering snakes, I had a visit with him," said
Grandfather Rogers proudly. "Told him some things, too."
"You don't say,” said Ed, with interest. “What did you tell
him?"
But it was time for the train to go. Grandfather Rogers was
rather astonished when Muriel put her arms around him and
kissed him. He would have been even more astonished had he
heard her in the car on the way home. She slid a hand into
Tony's, and he saw there were tears in her eyes.
"I wish I'd been kinder to him, Tony. That's what he is
kind. Isn't it?”
Tony considered that gravely. "I'll tell you what he is, my
girl,” he said. “He's an American. At least he's America before
it went high-hat. I suppose, in a way, the old boy's Democracy
as it ought to be.”
Feeling embarrassed by this, he kissed Muriel and grinned.
“There's good stuff in you, darling. Every now and then it
comes out. As now,” he added, and dried her eyes for her.
On the train Grandfather Rogers made himself comfortable.
For a little while he thought of John and Margery Mosely.
He saw them again in the dark on the bridge, still holding
hands and gazing down at the Potomac River. He had been
just in time, he and the policeman Bill. But it had been Bill
who had got to them first.
“Here, what are you doing?” he had demanded roughly.
“Whose business is that?” John had said, looking desperate
and defiant.
And then Bill's voice had softened. “There's an old party
here got kind of worried about you kids. Come on, colonel,
here they are.”
Well, it was all right now. Margery had cried a lot, but it
had probably done her good. A minute or two more, and they'd
have been gone, poor children; fussed up with life and not


ONE HOUR OF GLORY
27
knowing what it was all about. Like the whole country now.
Just growing pains. The country was all right. All it needed
was time.
He settled down in his seat, and after a while, finding him-
self unobserved, he took out his teeth and put them away. Then
he put on his spectacles and looked at the book on his knee,
Heroes of Four Wars. What made a hero, anyway? Tom and
Harry in Arlington, and Henry holding a man's pants and
asking him how he liked chicken. Even John Mosely, facing
eternity for Margery and himself rather than go on relief. All
brave, but all waste somehow. He sighed.
Nevertheless, he opened the book and started to read: "In
the last hundred years the United States has engaged in four
wars. In all of these it has seen many acts of valor. This
book ..."
But the car was warm and the motion of the train soothing.
The book slid from his hands to his knees and from his knees
to the floor.
When Ed came back to hear what he had said to the Presi-
dent, Grandfather Rogers was fast asleep. Ed carefully drew the
window shade and left him there.





II
The Young Visitor
OT





LEX HALLAM stamped in from his nightly visit
to the power plant. As usual, there had been some-
a rthi
thing wrong with it; and, also as usual, in his
dressing gown and bare legs he had run into the cactus plant
which Sheila had insisted on leaving by the path.
Sheila was knitting in the living room when he entered the
house, and knowing the customary effect of these excursions
she did not look up.
“I ran into that damned cactus again," he observed morosely.
She sighed. These intervals of waiting after Alex had sent
off a book to his publishers were always bad. Now, isolated as
they were, this one was being particularly trying.
“I should think you would know by this time that it is there,”
she said mildly. “Or put a light on the path.”
"Light!” he said, jerking the tweezers from the mantelpiece
and inspecting with a jaundiced eye a hairy but not unhand-
some leg. “Do you know how much light we use already ? Or
gasoline? Do you realize that I've ceased to be a writer and
become a nurse to a pair of dynamos and a motorboat?”
He extracted the barb with a jerk, and, stalking into the
bathroom, came back with the iodine. Both performances being
painful, he yelped; but as this elicited no sympathy from Sheila
he resumed his list of grievances.
"If everything else fails,” he said darkly, "I'm a qualified
plumber too. And if Mary loses another brush down a drain
pipe she can go after it herself.”
The list of his grievances mounted in his mind as the iodine
bit into his flesh.
"I came here to write," he went on. “But what am I? I'm a
31


32
FAMILIAR FACES
champion bug exterminator and water-tank inspector. I'm an
errand boy and a snake killer. On the days George doesn't
choose to show up I'm the milkman and the postman. And I'm
here to tell you that tomorrow I'm going to be a cactus re-
mover."
"I like that cactus where it is,” said Sheila, with some firm-
ness.
He laughed bitterly.
“Naturally. So I can step into it.” He glared at her. "Whose
idea was all this, anyhow?"
"Yours," Sheila said calmly. "You said you wanted to get
away from everything. You said you were sick of people and
noise and cocktail parties. You said you wanted to get to the
end of the world somewhere and write. You said—”
"All right. All right. Blame it on me. You know damned
well the idea appealed to you."
Suddenly she put away her knitting and got up. She was a
pretty woman, still young, but just then she looked rather
worn. She had put in a week of waiting to hear about the
book, bolstering Alex's ego at frequent intervals. Now she was
exhausted. She drew a long breath.
“Maybe you'll get a telegram tomorrow,” she said. “I cer-
tainly hope so."
"What do you mean, a telegram?”
“Do you have to put on an act for me, Alex?”
He stared at her. There had been moments recently when he
acutely disliked Sheila, and this was one of them. He knew
now why some men killed their wives. Nothing big. Nothing
dramatic. Just some small thing, like being shut off with her
on a spit of land in the Gulf of Mexico, with the promised
road not developing, and the nearest anything at all six miles
away by boat. Or being reminded that your publishers hadn't
thought enough of your last book even to telegraph.
as a


THE YOUNG VISITOR
33
"I'm not acting,” he said coldly. "If you want the exact truth,
I'm bored. I'm bored stiff. I know you do your best,” he added,
with a sort of malignant magnanimity, “but when I wanted
quiet I didn't want a graveyard. That's what this is, a nice
cactus-lined graveyard. No life. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do.
Nothing to"
He did not finish, however. Something was wrong with the
lights again. They were dying, undeniably dying. They faded
into a dull rosy red and then went out entirely, leaving them
like two enemies, facing each other in the dark.
"At least,” said Sheila's voice, frigid but resigned, "there
seems to be something to do. I suppose you've forgotten to order
gasoline again.”
“You would,” he retorted furiously. “There's plenty of gas.
There's plenty of everything."
“There seems to be something missing!" she observed, and
proceeded, with the ease of long custom, to find the matches,
locate a candle and light it.
"Good night,” she said politely, and went out, taking the
candle with her.
Left alone in the darkness he stared after her balefully. That
was what happened in marriage. You found a nice loving girl,
and, in due time, she became the sort who would have a pet
cactus so you could step into it; and would take away the only
candle and leave you in the dark.
The iodine was still stinging. It hurt all the way up his leg,
and when he fumbled for the flashlight he could not find it.
Instead he upset a vase of flowers, and the water soaked his
pajamas. He could hear it dripping from the table to the floor.
He hoped fervently that Sheila had left her knitting there.
He stood still for a moment, divided between the desire to
follow Sheila and tell her a few plain facts and the necessity
for some sort of action. Finally he chose the latter, flung out


34
FAMILIAR FACES
onto the porch in a rage, stumbled over a chair and collapsed
on the floor, holding his ankle and addressing his Maker in
low agonized tones.
He sat there for some time. Let the lights stay out. Let the
meat spoil in the electric refrigerator. Let the whole place go
to ruin. What did he care? He was completely and utterly fed
up. No ideas. No stimulation. This last book was tripe. It was
sentimental tosh. He'd better stop writing and raise oranges.
At least you didn't have to raise them on a typewriter.
He grunted and got up. There was a moon now, and in spite
of his leg he contemplated it for a moment. He had always
liked the moon. With Sheila the way she used to be he could
have enjoyed it, power plant or no power plant. But Sheila
had changed. There was no living with her this last week or
two. That crack about the gasoline, for instance!
That reminded him of the dynamos, and he made his way,
cautiously this time, to the powerhouse. There was the silence
of death over the place, and to his fury he found he had lost
his matches when he fell. In sheer demoniac rage he kicked the
cement base of the engine, and it was in the pause while he
accumulated adequate language that his attention was sud-
denly distracted.
There was a boat coming in!
Instantly his anger subsided and his pulse rate increased
alarmingly. A boat at that hour of the night meant only one
thing-a telegram. And a telegram meant only one thing, also.
If the book was wrong there would be a letter, long and apol-
ogetic. It was all right. All right. All right. He would get Sheila
up and they would have sandwiches and cold beer-no, the beer
would be warm. Well, anyhow, he would get Sheila and tell
her. She had always believed in him. She was a great girl. She-
It was a new man who was on the dock with a lantern when
George, an angel of light, a messenger of hope, brought his


THE YOUNG VISITOR
35
boat to a standstill. Not that George looked like either. He
had a white rag tied around his lower jaw, and such part of
his face as was visible was contorted with agony.
“Got a telegram for you, Mr. Hallam," he said, without
moving his jaw.
“Thanks. Hand it up." Out of the rise in his spirits flowed
compassion. “Got a toothache?”.
“Yes, sir. I hadn't by rights to be up at all. But the agent
thought you might be in a hurry.”
"Put an extra dollar on the account, George. Sorry to trouble
you.”
The boat slid off, a shadowy black streak in the moonlit
water, and Alex stood gazing after it. What a night! What
peace! He sniffed appreciatively, but the fragrance of orange
blossoms being overwhelmed by gasoline, abandoned the idea.
Then, sitting down comfortably on a bench, the lantern beside
him, he opened the envelope and took out the message.
It said: “Motoring to Palm Beach. Reach Baird's Landing
tonight about eleven. Please meet.” And it was signed “Betty.”
He sat staring at it, then slowly and savagely he read it again.
Betty! What Betty? He knew a dozen Bettys, and for some un-
speakable reason he was now to dress, take the boat, go six
miles, pick up one of them and bring her back. Nor were
things better when, throwing his pride to the winds, he stalked
into Sheila's room and laid the message in front of her.
"Betty ?” said Sheila, looking very comfortable in her bed
and rather amused than otherwise. “I suppose it's Betty
Jennings.”
“Why should you suppose any such thing?"
But a cold chill struck the base of his spine and proceeded
by inches up to between his shoulder blades, where it remained.
"Well,” Sheila said, lying back on her pillows with the air of
one who abandons all responsibility, “you rather fell for her


36
FAMILIAR FACES
that night before we left, didn't you? Are you sure you didn't
ask her to come?"
“Don't be ridiculous.”
But his voice lacked conviction. What had he said to the
darned girl anyhow? They had been dancing, and she had
looked up at him with wide candid eyes and told how lonely
she often felt, and that she knew his books by heart.
"I just can't believe I'm dancing with you," she had said.
"Well, you are, my child. How is it?".
"It's divine,” she had answered, and closed her eyes.
Sheila was looking at him.
"You did ask her, didn't you?"
"I may have said something. She seemed low in her mind
that night and lonely. Just if she was in the neighborhood. You
know what I mean.”
“Well, she's yours, not mine," said Sheila, yawning, and,
turning over, gave every evidence of going to sleep.
He dressed in candlelight and in a state of acute indignation;
and before he left he stalked to the side of Sheila's bed.
"Are you going to do anything about this?” he inquired
savagely. “Or are you leaving it up to me?”
"Up to you,” said Sheila drowsily. "Put her in the guest
room and tell her for me that I'm glad to have help for a day
or two."
“What sort of help?”
Quite unexpectedly Sheila giggled.
"Never mind,” she said. “You'd better hurry. And you need
cigarettes if the store's open. She smokes like a chimney."
"I resent that,” he said hotly. “Just because a girl is young
and—and lonely, and darned good looking, you have to pick
on her.”
Sheila merely yawned again.
“I haven't thought of her as lonely,” she observed. “I could


THE YOUNG VISITOR
37
never see her for the crowd, especially of susceptible males.
However, that's not the point. You'd better hurry."
He slammed out of the room and down to the boat. But once
out on the water, negotiating carefully the twisted channel, he
felt better. After all, she was a nice kid, and she had certainly
liked him. She had even asked if she could call him Alex.
"If you wouldn't mind,” she said. “I'm so sick of boys. They
don't know anything. All they want is to have a good time.”
He warmed a bit, remembering. They had sat out a dance
or two, and she had asked him why he was going away when
she had just found him. That was how it had happened, too, for
he had said he wasn't going out of the world, and she had said
with another wide-eyed look that he would forget her, where-
ever it was.
“Forget you? Don't be silly."
“But you will. You live such an interesting life. You will,
Alex darling."
“Come and see if I have forgotten you!”
"You don't mean that."
“Of course I mean it."
And he distinctly remembered writing Baird's Landing on
a card and giving it to her.
He began to feel quite cheerful. After all, a man was not
necessarily less of a man because he had written a bad book.
What mattered was to live; to live fully, to have friends, to
mix with youth and so grow young again. Moreover, he was
only thirty-five. Maybe he had lost his perspective.
Nevertheless, the six miles were long and not made more
happy by the knowledge that the boat was short of gas. A cold
breeze had sprung up, too, and when, a quarter of a mile from
the landing, the engine stopped and quit entirely he was glad
enough to row and warm up a bit. But the boat was heavy, and
some of his enthusiasm died before he made the long dock.


38
FAMILIAR FACES
He revived, however, on hearing a gay young voice from
the darkness overhead.
"Hello!” it called. “Is that you, Alex?”.
"Hello yourself,” he said, somewhat breathlessly. “How are
you? And where are you?”
"I'm here. Oh, Alex darling, I can hardly believe it.”
There was a short, remarkably like George's, from some-
where near. Betty, however, paid no attention.
“I've brought you a pretty kiss,” she called. “Hurry up and
get it.”
This time the short was undeniably George's, and the kiss
Alex gave her when he had climbed to the dock was anything
from elder-brotherly to fatherly. But nothing could silence her
clear young voice in the stillness.
“I just can't believe it,” she said happily. “A moon, and you.
You are glad to see me, aren't you, Alex?”
"That's hardly the word,” he said, still aware of George hid-
den somewhere and with ears that turned like a mule's. “Sheila
will be glad too."
“Sheila?” she said vaguely. “Oh, yes, of course. I hope she
doesn't mind.”
“Why should she?” he said, and squeezed the hand she had
slid through his arm. Then he became severely practical.
“Where's your baggage?” he inquired.
“It's here, in my laundry bag. I can only stay a day or two.
The rest's locked in my car. They told me I'd have to leave
the car."
“Unless it can swim."
She laughed at that, a gay young laugh that warmed his very
heart. Oh, youth! Oh, love and tenderness! Oh, moon on
shining waters! Oh-hell, he was out of gas.
It took some time, George having retired at the possibility of
work, to fill the boat with gasoline, and as the store was closed


THE YOUNG VISITOR
39
he could buy no cigarettes. Nevertheless, he felt slightly heady
when at last, clutching a striped laundry bag, Betty climbed
down into the boat and for a moment he held her slim young
body.
“Atta girl,” he said, reverting to a form of speech he had
long abandoned. “Comfy? Warm enough?”
“Just frightfully happy."
It was after they had left the dock and were headed into the
moon that she looked slightly worried.
"I feel as though I'd forgotten something, Alex.”
"Well, forget everything. This is the place for it.”
He began to feel rather exultant. She was slim and distract-
ingly pretty, and, although his leg still bothered him, he felt
younger than he had felt for years. Nevertheless, he was startled
when, halfway back, she called over the noise of the engine.
"Listen, Alex,” she said. “The water's heavenly. Let's stop
and take a swim.”
“What? In puris naturalibus! You shock me!” .
She gazed at him with her candid, childish eyes.
"Don't be silly,” she said. “I'll go over first, and you can turn
your back. Then I'll swim off, and you can come in. I've often
done it."
He had a brief picture of Sheila-or even of George-observ-
ing this innocent Garden of Eden, and shook his head deter-
minedly.
"No time,” he said.
“You write about things like that,” she said reproachfully.
The engine, however, at that time began to knock, and he
stooped over it. When he straightened he was conscious of a
complete silence behind him; a silence which was followed, to
his horror, by a splash. When he looked he could see a small
wet head rising from the water, and a bare arm waving at him.
“Come on in," she called. "It's wonderful.”


THE YOUNG VISITOR
41
“I don't mind you kids being free,” he said soberly. “It's
mostly window dressing. But I wish you'd remember that I've
got a wife, and she's neither dumb nor blind."
Nor was she. She was not, as a matter of fact, even asleep.
As they climbed the bank to the house Sheila in a dressing
gown appeared with a candle on the porch and surveyed them
both.
“Good gracious,” she said to Betty. “Did he throw you over-
board?”
“I had a little swim,” said Betty meekly.
"Then you'd better get in to the fire,” said Sheila briskly.
"And give me your bathing suit. I'll hang it up to dry."
There was a brief silence. Sheila looked rather blank. Then
she saw Alex's face and smiled to herself.
“Or maybe you'd better attend to that yourself,” she said.
"I've got a good fire, Alex. Take her in and look after her.”
Some time later he followed Sheila into the bedroom and
closed the door. Betty was in the living room, smoking the last
of his cigarettes, and giving no indication of considering sleep.
Never had his bed looked so tempting.
“I want to tell you, Sheila—"
"You don't need to tell me anything, Alex."
He eyed her. She looked very smug and even slightly amused.
“What does that mean?” he asked suspiciously.
“Nothing. I know her and her kind, that's all. You couldn't
keep her for a week, could you?”
“What do you mean by her kind? She's a sweet, impulsive
kid. That's all. And why a week? What's the matter with
you, anyhow?"
Sheila yawned. It seemed to him that she had been yawning
all evening.
"Nothing's the matter. She's young and strong, that's all.”
He had no idea what she meant. His hands were blistered.


42
FAMILIAR FACES
He was quite certain that he had taken cold when he gave
Betty his coat, and there was no moon inside the house to feed
romance.
He gave Sheila a strange look and went back to the living
room.
At two o'clock in the morning Betty was still curled up by
the fire, talking cheerfully. Her life seemed an open book of
boys, cocktails and night clubs, but there were moments when
she disappeared strangely; when the lines of her young body
faded out and Alex's head would jerk forward. Then she
would scratch a match and light another cigarette, and he
would rouse again and try not to count how many were left.
At something after two, however, he got up with deter-
mination.
"Listen, my child,” he said. “I've had a long day and so have
you, and I've got to fix that power plant in the morning. How
about some sleep?"
She rose reluctantly.
"I love being with you,” she said, raising her face with its
wide candid eyes to his. “But I suppose I bore you. I'm not in-
telligent, you know. That's why I'm so crazy about you, Alex.”
He made a valiant effort to rise to this, but in spite of him-
self an unexpected yawn rather spoiled the effect. He did
manage a chaste salute on her forehead, however, and felt that
he had failed her. He thought, indeed, that there was even a
little malice when he showed her her room, and she called him
darling when she said her good night in a loud clear voice.
Sheila was asleep when he went to bed; or at least so she
appeared. But he could not sleep. His mind was a chaos of
publishers, power plant and Betty. Also his back was stiff, his
hands hurt, his ankle throbbed, and when he reached out for a
cigarette the bedside box was empty. Nevertheless, he was
aware of a small warm feeling in the region of his heart. She


THE YOUNG VISITOR
43
really liked him. He was not a stodgy thirty-five to her; and
tomorrow when he was rested he would show her the power
plant and the septic system and the water tower, and explain
about the plumbing. She would see that a writer was also a
man. ...
It seemed to him that he had barely closed his eyes when he
heard a faint tapping on his door, and Sheila in the next bed
turned over and opened her eyes.
“Alex!” called a gay young voice..
“Yes?” he said thickly.
"It's a simply divine morning, Alex. Do come out and look
at it.”
There was a faint movement from Sheila, followed by every
indication of stifling herself with a pillow. Alex gave her a
bitter look, groaned and looked at the clock. It was barely six,
and the rapping was continuing.
“Alex! Are you awake?”
"Certainly I'm awake,” he said with dignity. “Give me
time. I'm coming.”
There seemed now to be no question about Sheila. She was
fairly gasping for breath.
“If you think it's so darned funny,” he said icily, “get up
yourself.” But she merely stopped laughing and stretched
luxuriously.
"I'm taking a vacation,” she said. “Get up, Alex darling,
and look at the sun. And you might look at the power plant
while you're about it.”
Some of yesterday's instinct toward murder revived in him,
but he repressed it.
"I'm darned if I understand you lately," he said sulkily, and
proceeded to throw on some clothes.
Betty was waiting for him on the porch as he staggered out,
still drunk with sleep. She wore a negligee over what seemed


44
FAMILIAR FACES
a very thin nightdress, but appeared to be entirely oblivious of
herself. Also she looked as fresh as though she had slept the
clock around
“Isn't it wonderful?” she said. “I just wanted you to see it.”
“My dear child, I've seen it before.”
“Not with me, Alex.”
He shut his eyes against the blazing early sun and, leaning
against a post, yawned heavily.
"No, that's so," he said thickly. “So what?"
She slipped her fingers into his like a coaxing child.
“I want to take a walk, Alex.”
"At this hour,” he said alarmed. “You have all day to walk."
“But not when things are like this. Fresh and-well, you
know. Sort of mysterious. I should think, the way you write,
you loved the dawn.”
“I'd rather stay up for it than get up for it. And,” he added
virtuously, "I go for no walk with anybody dressed like that.
Go and put some clothes on."
"How funny you are! I didn't think you were a bit like that.”
But she went, obediently enough, and he sat down on a porch
chair and fell immediately asleep. He roused guiltily on her
return.
"All right. Here we are,” he said, with spurious liveliness.
“How about the power plant? I ought to look at it anyhow.”
“Mercy, I don't want to see any old power plant. I need some
exercise.”
From the house came a sound which resembled somewhat
George's snorts the night before, and which left him indignant
and outraged. The sun stabbed his eyeballs and within him was
a great void, caused by the absence of morning coffee. Not
for years had he faced the daylight without coffee. But in
front of him was Betty, youth and romance in a pair of vio
.


THE YOUNG VISITOR
lently striped slacks and something which resembled a hand-
kerchief tied around and over her young breast. Between that
and the slacks was an undeniable portion of Betty herself, of
which, however, she seemed quite unconscious. Also, in her
hand, she carried what was only too obviously a camera. He
shied away from it like a scared horse.
"Good God!” he said. “What's that?”
"I thought I'd take some pictures of you,” she said ingenu-
ously. “You know, famous author resting in the South.” She
was focusing the camera on him. “I do wish you'd smile, Alex.”
He loathed cameras. He loathed having his picture taken,
especially at six o'clock in the morning on an empty stomach.
But he forced a ghastly grin, and, as though hypnotized, he
stood and sat for a half hour, while she took him from every
possible angle. When at last she ran out of film she gave him
an enchanting glance.
"I won a bet on that,” she said happily.
"A bet?"
“I know a man who works on a newspaper, and he bet I
couldn't do it.”
He looked terrified.
“Now see here, no newspaper gets those pictures. They're
for you, and only for you."
"I think you're sweet,” was her reply to that.
He felt completely helpless. A despairing glance toward the
house showed no signs of Mary and breakfast, and to his fury
Sheila's shades were down against the light. There was a wife!
A woman who could calmly let him in for this sort of thing
and then go to sleep! He felt bitterly disappointed in Sheila;
and what had she meant about taking a vacation? That was
a dirty crack, if ever he had heard one.
He pulled himself together with an effort. He would live up


46
FAMILIAR FACES
to Betty if it killed him. If she chose to consider him a nice
combination of distinction and romance He straightened his
stiff back and smiled fatuously.
“All right,” he said. “Now what?”
The what turned out to be a walk, in which they covered
a large part of the county. Toward the end he was staggering,
but Betty was still fresh and gay, and still talking. When they
reached the bathing beach on their return, she stopped sud-
denly.
“How perfectly divine," she said. “Alex. I'm going in. You
go away somewhere and don't peek. Nobody will see me."
"The whole house can see you."
“Well, really!" she said. “You aren't any fun at all. Sheila
won't mind.”
"Why won't she mind?”
“Good gracious, Alex, she's been married to you for a hun-
dred years!”
"Ten, to be exact. What's that got to do with it? I'm just
asking," he said, eying her. "I suppose the idea is that after
having been married to one woman for ten years, what I do
has ceased to matter to her. Is that it?”
She looked vaguely uncomfortable.
“I wish you wouldn't go highbrow on me,” she said queru-
lously.
"Or is it,” he insisted, "that I am so old that I don't matter?
Let's get at this. I'm interested.'
But she chose that moment to step on a buried cactus plant
and to stand on one foot, gazing at him plaintively.
“It's in my foot, Alex. It hurts."
He gave a haunted glance at the house.
“Let me see it,” he said. “And for God's sake be careful where
you sit down!"
Nevertheless, he felt a small but undeniable thrill when
vu.


THE YOUNG VISITOR
47
he took off her sandal and held her bare foot in his hand. It
was a pretty foot, with painted nails. Like a baby's foot, he
thought. He felt rather like kissing it, but after removing an
infinitesimal barb he merely gave it an affectionate pat.
"All fixed,” he said. “See if you can stand on it.”
She put it down, squealed and lifted it again.
“You'll have to help me, Alex. Or carry me. I don't weigh
much."
In the end he did carry her, eying defiantly an open-mouthed
Mary at the kitchen window, and fully aware that the hand-
kerchief had moved somewhat and that more of Betty was
showing than had been intended.
Sheila was inside at the table when, Betty leaning heavily
on him, they reached the dining room. And he was quite
certain that something had amused her. But she was cordial
enough to them both, sitting rested and fresh behind the coffee
urn.
"I'm sorry,” she said, “but George didn't come this morning.
No mail. No papers. No milk or cream,” she explained to
Betty. “Will you have your coffee black or use canned cream?”
"Canned cream?”
“Out of cans, you know,” said Sheila placidly. “You know.
Babies use it.”
"I'll take it black," said Betty with resignation.
The meal was rather silent, but the strong black coffee made
Alex his own man again. True, he yawned once or twice, but
he damned George with more of his old spirit, and some of
the warmth of the evening before came back. Now and then
Betty turned on him a pair of wide limpid eyes, and he felt
young and attractive again, and not at all like an author whose
wife didn't understand him, whose last book was so bad the
publishers had ignored it.
It is true that there was a strange twist to Sheila's mouth


48
FAMILIAR FACES
which might have been a repressed grin, but, with the coffee
where it belonged, he ignored it.
“And what,” said Sheila brightly, "are your plans for the
day?”
“What are you going to do?” he inquired, with cold polite-
ness.
“Oh, me! I'm going to rest.” She gave Betty a little smile.
"You don't know what it means to have you here,” she said
gaily. “You see, Alex takes a lot of amusing, and now I can
have a holiday.”
Betty stared at her rather blankly.
“I thought he wrote.”
“Not all the time. There are intervals.”
That sounded like another dirty crack, and he eyed Sheila
coldly.
“What does he do then?” Betty inquired. “Play?”
"Well, he does a little work now and then," Sheila admitted.
"He's got a power plant to fix today, but he'll love having you
around while he does it.”
Alex got up suddenly and looked for a cigarette. There were
none, nor did a frenzied search of the pockets of his various
coats produce any. Betty, left alone at the table, was looking
apologetic.
"I smoked a lot last night,” she said guiltily, “and I forgot to
bring any. It's funny how I forget things. Ever since I came
I've had a feeling that I've forgotten something."
She looked vaguely around, but nobody was listening. The
search had now involved the whole household, for Alex with-
out his morning cigarette was a tiger unleashed. When at last
-still cigaretteless-he came back to the living room, it was
to find Sheila at the window alone. She was gazing out in-
tently, and paid no attention while he looked under the furni-
ture and poked behind cushions.


THE YOUNG VISITOR
49
“It's a queer thing," he said, "that every cigarette in this
house has suddenly disappeared. I notice," he went on with
bitterness, “that you don't run out of knitting wool.”
Sheila, however, was unmoved.
“I dare say that is because your young friends don't knit,”
she observed placidly.
“My young friends! Now see here, Sheila—".
"Anyhow," she went on, still looking out the window, "I
imagine she has gone to get some. I think,” she added thought-
fully, “that that must be the reason she is taking the boat."
Somebody was certainly taking the boat. From the boathouse
below came the hammering and pounding of an engine, fol-
lowed by the loud roar of an exhaust. When he got to the porch
the boat was a hundred feet from the dock and, guided by a
young and charming figure, was ignoring the channel and
heading in the general direction of Baird's Landing.
He turned on Sheila, with the accumulated venom of being
up at six, no mail, no papers, no George and no tobacco.
“You let her go,” he shouted. “You stood there and watched
her-Great Scott, she'll hit the bar!”
"Not for the first time, I dare say,” said Sheila, without
malice. “She is impulsive, isn't she?”
That, however, was lost to him. He was racing down the
slope, shouting and waving, and from the boat Betty, non-
chalantly at the wheel, waved back and gave him a radiant
smile. Almost immediately, however, the boat hit the bar, and
Betty vanished completely from his sight. It was some mo-
ments before she got to her feet and waggled a feeble hand in
his direction.
His rage was mixed with relief. At least she wasn't hurt, and
there was something lonely and brave about her as she stood
there, looking slightly dazed.
He got the skiff and rowed out to her, and even the discovery


50
FAMILIAR FACES
that the propeller shaft was bent and the propeller blades
curled up like the leaves of a cabbage did not entirely harden
his heart.
"Alex!” she said. “If you scold me I'll cry. You see, I just
remembered—”
"Now listen," he said. “Get into this boat and forget it.
You're not hurt, are you?”
“I bumped my head. You don't hate me, Alex, do you?”
“Great Scott, no."
“Do you suppose it will run again?”.
“Not so you could notice it. But don't worry about that.”
She seemed uncertain for a moment. Then with an air of
accepting the inevitable she climbed down into the skiff.
“You are a sweet person,” she told him, and relaxed com-
fortably into the stern.
At the end of two hours of hard labor he got the launch off
the bar. His hands were blistered again and the sun was boiling.
Off at the bathing beach Betty, in a negligible bathing suit,
was splashing happily around, and on the porch a cool and
calm Sheila was quietly knitting. When he looked at his watch
it was only half past ten, and he held it to his ear to discover
if it had stopped.
Sheila looked up pleasantly when he dragged himself onto
the porch.
“I hate to remind you,” she said, “but with George not here
and the electric refrigerator off, Mary says the meat is spoiling.
If we're to have any lunch—”.
"Listen," he said, goaded. “I'm not worrying about lunch.
That's your job. And to hell with the power plant. I've had all
the exercise I want. What I need is some cold beer and a
shower, and then I'm going to bed.”
"Cold beer?” Sheila inquired, and he slammed into the
house.


THE YOUNG VISITOR
51
He felt better after the shower, however. He painted his
hands again with iodine, and to avoid Sheila went by the
back door to the small powerhouse. There he was discovered
shortly by a Betty still in her bathing suit, and showing a pair
of long and beautiful young legs; a Betty, too, who had appar-
ently forgotten about the boat entirely.
"Imagine your knowing so many things," she said. “I knew
you wrote marvelous books, but you do everything else, too,
don't you?”
“Not everything," he said modestly.
She curled up in a corner and gazed at him.
“To think I'm here!” she observed complacently. “It's the
most wonderful day of my life. Alex darling, do tell me about
your new book.”
"I'm afraid it's a flop.”
She squealed.
“But it couldn't be, Alex. How can you talk like that? Do tell
me, just a little."
In the end he did, and some of the weight left his chest,
where it had been for days. By George, it wasn't so bad, as he
told it. It had quality. It had novelty, too. He forgot his back
and his hands, forgot his sunburned face and warm beer and
the change in Sheila from a cheerful playmate to a bitter crea-
ture who knitted most of the time. He sat, looking out at
the waving palms and orange trees that needed spraying—if
George was worth a damn-and put his very soul into the
narration.
“And so, at the end,” he said, “they make the better choice.
Life will go on. It will change many things. It will separate
them, but each will know, always and forever_"
He choked a bit and glanced hastily at Betty. But Betty, in
her corner, was sound asleep.
Lunch was not entirely a success that day. George had not


FAMILIAR FACES
appeared. Alex's sunburned face felt as though it would crack,
his back felt like lumbago, and the chops were certainly not
beyond suspicion. Sheila, who ate only a salad at midday,
seemed contented enough, and Betty prattled without cessation.
“Alex told me the story of his new book,” she said shame-
lessly. “I think it's wonderful.”
Sheila choked and coughed."
“Really?” she said, with interest. “He will be so glad you
approve.” She pushed back her chair. “Well, what do you
two young things plan for this afternoon?" she inquired
casually.
"Nothing,” said Alex, eying her.
But he had counted without Betty.
“Why, Alex!” she said. “I thought we were going fishing.
Can't we just row about a little and troll a line? I love fishing."
“Yes,” said Sheila with suspicious promptness. “Do row about
a little and troll a line, Alex. We need fish for supper any-
how."
He gave her a long hard look, but she had picked up her
knitting and was counting stitches.
"I suppose,” he said coldly, “that the fact that I have blisters
on my hands doesn't matter."
"I'll row,” said Betty. “I adore rowing. Do let me, Alex
darling."
But he merely transformed the look from Sheila to her, and
what he saw had lost some of its glamour.
“Not on your life,” he said grimly.
He gathered up the tackle without enthusiasm. Only one
rod and one reel. He wouldn't be fishing. He would be rowing.
He would be rowing and getting more blisters, while Sheila
sat on the porch and took a vacation, whatever she meant by
that.
Before he departed he looked hopefully in the fireplace for


THE YOUNG VISITOR
53
vel.
the fragment of a cigarette, but there was none in sight, and
it was without so much as a farewell to Sheila that he marched
out of the house and down to the boat.
He felt a good fifty by that time, but Betty, waiting for him
on the dock-in the bathing suit once more and looking like a
water sprite-revived him somewhat.
"I can't believe it,” she said. “Isn't it divine?”
“Isn't what divine?”
"Having you all to myself for a whole afternoon,” she ex-
plained. “Don't you realize what a famous man you are? I
know dozens of girls who would be simply wild if they knew.
Is that my pole?”
“It's your rod, my child. And don't lose it. It's a pet of mine.
Also don't count on a whole afternoon. There's a limit to
what I can do."
He helped her into the boat, where she curled up like a
kitten in the stern. Then he got in himself with considerable
caution, because of his back. He cast off, sending a malignant
glance of pure hatred toward Sheila, waving on the porch, and
settled down grimly to the oars.
"It's lots more fun than a motorboat,” said Betty.
“Yes. It must be."
That, however, was lost on her. She had spied her first
pelican and was gazing at it with much the wide-eyed look
she gave him on occasions.
“What on earth is it?”
“It's a pelican. You know the rhyme. Its beak can hold more
than its belly can.”
“Can it?” she said vaguely.
He rowed for two hours, while Betty prattled steadily. There
were no fish. His hands were practically paralyzed, his back
one long ache from where his head sat on it to where he sat on
it himself; but he kept on doggedly. By the Lord Harry, if


54
FAMILIAR FACES
Sheila wanted fish she would have fish, if he had to kill him-
self to get them. In due time, too, he discovered that by looking
at Betty and not listening to her he could manage better. In
a world strangely cold to him lately she was warm and friendly.
She even found him romantic. He was certainly not romantic
to Sheila.
He rowed obstinately far out into the bay. The black fin
of a cruising shark broke the surface of the water. A fish rolled
near by, and the bald pink head of a huge turtle was uplifted,
gazed at them and disappeared. Then he realized that Betty
had stopped talking and was looking at him with a certain
apprehension.
“Alex,” she said. “You know this morning when I took the
boat?”
“I do."
"Well, I'd just remembered. I knew I'd forgotten something,
but I couldn't think. Then I—".
“Look out!” he said suddenly. "Your rod! You've got a fish.”
But it was too late. One moment the rod was there; the next
it had flipped into the air and was gone.
Betty sat up suddenly and stared after it.
“Oh, Alex!” she wailed.
He made a frantic dive with an oar and promptly lost it.
Then he felt the boat lurch and looked around to see that Betty
had dived overboard. He was divided between rage and horror.
“Come back here,” he yelled. “There are sharks around.
Betty!"
The Betty, however, who rose to the surface emerged only
for a second and immediately went down again. He stood up
in the boat, staring incredulously at where her small sleek body
had left no more impression than a thumb taken out of a bowl
of soup.
“Betty!” he shouted. “Come up here. Don't be a fool.”


THE YOUNG VISITOR
55
She did come up then, but she was some distance away and
looking like a scared baby.
"I'm caught in the line,” she gurgled, and disappeared again.
He kicked off his shoes and went overboard viciously. The
little idiot! Didn't anybody teach these youngsters any sense?
There was nothing gentle in the way he caught her and
brought her to the surface; nothing gentle, either, in the way he
untangled her.
"What made you do an idiotic thing like that?” he de-
manded.
But she only rewarded him with a luminous smile.
"Oh, Alex!” she said, closing her eyes. “To think you saved
my life.”
They were still in the water, but now he looked about for
the boat. It was far away, however, and with wind and tide
assisting it was apparently on the way to the Gulf of Mexico.
Betty was lying relaxed on his arm, an almost beatific expres-
sion on her face.
"Nobody will believe me when I tell them,” she said con-
tentedly. “And there's a big fish around me somewhere. It
rubbed against me a minute ago."
He went cold with horror. Then suddenly a furious rage
possessed him, and with all his heart and soul he longed to
push Betty under the surface and hold her there indefinitely.
"Don't be such a little fool,” he said. “That was probably a
shark, and now you're going to swim for your life.”
She gave him a dreadful look and turned white.
“A shark!” she said feebly.
“A shark," he repeated, “and if you faint I'll slap you or
drop you—and I don't much care which.”
Several ages later he dragged her up onto the beach. She still
had the requisite number of legs and arms, but beyond that
she completely lacked attraction for him. What he wanted was


THE YOUNG VISITOR
57
he heard a motorboat approaching, and some time later
saw George's dolorous face in the doorway. He had a cloth
tied around his jaw, and he was holding something in his
hand.
“It's a telegram,” he said. “A repeat. Mr. Baird says he gave
one to the young lady last night.” Here George made a valiant
effort and repressed a snort. “Then when there wasn't any
answer this one came. What's happened to the boat, Mr.
Hallam? Looks like you'd piled her up somewhere and I can't
see the skiff.”
“Give me the telegram,” said Alex, “and for God's sake have
you got a cigarette?"
George looked surprised, but he produced a crumpled pack-
age, and Alex inhaled deeply before he opened the envelope.
There was a mist in front of his eyes, but when it cleared the
message stood out, clear and beyond doubt.
BEEN OUT OF TOWN STOP BOOK BEST YET STOP CONGRATULATIONS
STOP WIRE AT ONCE WHERE TO SEND GALLEYS
He lay still for a moment. Then he Aung back the bedclothes
and stood on his feet. Sheila caught him as he was making
for the door.
"Where are you going?” she demanded.
"To commit that murder,” he said happily. "And this time
it will be a murder.”
Late that night he and Sheila sat together in the living room.
The night was chilly and there was a fire. The lights were on
full, and the cigarette boxes were full also. Remotely and reced-
ing into the distance they could hear the engine of George's
boat, carrying Betty to new fields, via Palm Beach, and there
was a divine peace over everything.
But Alex was not easy. Now and then he looked at Sheila's
face, smooth and lovely in the firelight.


FAMILIAR FACES
"I'm sorry, old girl," he said at last. “I suppose it's been pretty
hard on you. But it's over. You know that, don't you?"
"It's over until the next book.”
"What do you mean?”
She smiled at him.
"It's always a bad time until you hear,” she said. “I suppose
you need diversion, or something to bolster up your pride.
And she did it.”
"She damned near killed me!”
He leaned back. His muscles still ached and most of his
body was sore, but his soul was jubilant within him. Here
was peace and quiet, here was an open fire, and the soft lapping
of water on the beach below. Even the motorboat now was
beyond hearing. He drew a long breath of sheer contentment.
"It was a pretty good idea, after all,” he said. “This place.”
Sheila, however, was not looking at him. Her eyes, instead,
were fixed on the lights. There was no doubt about it. They
were dying; undeniably dying. And as she looked they faded
into a dull rosy red and then went out entirely, leaving her and
Alex alone in the friendly dark.





62
FAMILIAR FACES
starved, he thought. Queer. I always thought Nellie was crazy
about him.
He stopped the car in front of the house and got out. There
was a lighted lamp inside, and someone was moving about.
He got out and clumped up the steps.
"Hi, Foster!” he called. “Got a minute or two?”
There was a silence. Then the man came to the door. He
looked uneasy. “I'm getting my supper," he said. “What's
wrong, sheriff ?”
“Nothing wrong. Just mending my political fences. That's
all. Election soon.”
“Well, I'm for you. You know that.”
He moved aside unwillingly, and the sheriff came in. He
knew the house well. It was the usual farmhouse of the district,
and Nellie Foster had kept it immaculate. It was untidy now,
however. The kitchen sink was piled with dishes.
The sheriff looked surprised. “Nellie sick?” he asked.
"Nope. Gone to her mother's.”
“Where's that?”
"Indiana,” said Foster. “Old lady's not well. She's been gone
a week now."
“Looks like it's time she came back," said the sheriff, grin-
ning. “That dog of hers looks it, too. Why don't you feed him
once in a while?”
Foster was working at the stove. He was a big man, hand-
some after a fashion, but now slovenly and unkempt. He kept
his back to the sheriff.
“Damn thing won't come near me," he said. “I kicked him
once, and he didn't like it. Anyhow, he was her dog, not
mine.” He added grudgingly, “How about supper? I'm going
to fry some eggs.”
"Fine. I'll wash first.”
The sheriff went out onto the back porch. There was a tin


FAMILIAR FACES
"How long's that been going on?” he asked. “It doesn't
sound like Rags. He was a quiet dog."
Foster rose and picked up the plates. “Since Nellie left,
mostly. He misses her, I guess. Want some more coffee?”
“No, thanks. I'd better be moving."
But the sheriff was thoughtful as he drove back to town, and
as he got ready for bed that night he spoke to his wife.
“Saw Foster this evening,” he said. "He says Nellie's gone to
visit her mother.”
“Then that's why she wasn't at church last Sunday. I won-
dered.”
"Where is the mother?” he asked. “What part of the coun-
COUN-
try?"
"Indiana, I think. Why?"
Well, that was all right. He was probably only making a fool
of himself. He finished undressing, went to bed and to sleep.
Out at the farm, however, there was no sleep. The dog saw to
that. He stood in the orchard and bayed his grief and loneli-
ness to the sky. At last, in a frenzy, Foster picked up the gun
and went after him. It was hopeless, of course. The dog was
not there, and with an oath the man went back to the house,
to lie awake waiting for the sound once more. .
In the past week it had been like that, as though it were a
game between the two, man and dog; the dog winning at
night; the man winning by day. But the advantage lay with the
dog. At intervals he slept. The man could not, and he was
desperate for sleep. He would doze on the porch, his rifle across
his knees, waking with a jerk to find his body bathed in sweat
and the gun on the floor.
He did no work on the day following the sheriff's visit, and
that night after dark he met the Burford girl out by the barn.
She was a big girl, handsome and frankly lustful. She put her
arms around him, but he was unresponsive.


THE DOG IN THE ORCHARD
"What's the matter with you?"
"Nothing. I couldn't meet you last night. The sheriff was
here."
She eyed him. “The sheriff? What did he want?”
"Nothing much. Election's coming soon. But he heard that
damned dog."
“Why don't you poison him? I've said all along he'd make
trouble.”
"He's too smart for that. I've tried it. He won't eat around
the place. Anyhow the sheriff saw him. He might ask ques-
tions. Well, let's forget it.” He pulled her to him and kissed
her roughly. “Listen,” he said. “I'm going to sell this place and
get out. You'll come along, won't you?”
"Sure.” But there was no conviction in her voice, and he
pushed her away.
“You'll come, all right,” he told her grimly.
It rained the next two days. The dog lay in the field and
shivered. And on the third day the sheriff went into the store
which was the local post office. He asked for his mail and
chatted with the postmistress.
"Hear Nellie Foster's gone away,” he said idly. “Out to
Indiana."
“That so? When did she go?”
“A week or so ago. Don't tell me Nellie hasn't written to
Foster!"
"I don't remember any mail for him. I don't think he's been
in this week.”
“He can't be very anxious about her."
"He's pretty anxious about that girl of Burford's. It beats me
how a man with a wife will let a girl like that make a fool of
him.”
"You sound pretty sure.”
"I am sure. I've seen them together.”


66
FAMILIAR FACES
That day the sheriff had a talk with his deputy. “Maybe I'm
crazy, Joe; maybe I'm not. I just don't like it. Nellie was a
homekeeping woman, and a trip to Indiana would mean some-
thing to her. What does she do? She doesn't call up anybody
and say she's going. She just goes. It isn't natural.”
“Sure sounds queer," said the deputy.
“I think Nellie's dog knows something. And it's my guess
that Foster's out to kill him. He's got a gun. It might be a good
idea to go out there and look around, anyhow."
They went out through the rain that afternoon. The roads
after they left the state highway were muddy, and Foster was
evidently not expecting company. As they turned in at his
lane he was on the porch, and he had the rifle to his shoulder.
He fired before he saw them.
"For God's sake," said the deputy, “what's he doing?”
Then Foster saw them, and his face went blank. He put
down the gun and waited for them.
“What's the idea?” asked the sheriff, as he stopped the car.
“Getting ready to go to war?”
“There's no law against my shooting rabbits, is there?”
“Weasels and rabbits. You seem to have a lot of varmints
around here, Foster.”
The sheriff got out of the car, and the deputy followed. They
climbed the steps, while Foster watched them with suspicious,
bloodshot eyes. He had not shaved, and he had been drinking.
Not much. He was still wary.
“What do you fellows want?” he demanded.
“Well, I've got an errand, if you're agreeable. I told my wife
about Rags's missing Nellie, and she said she'd like to keep him
for a while."
Foster shrugged. “You can have him if you can catch him.
He's gone plumb wild. Most ornery dog I ever saw. Won't even
eat."


THE DOG IN THE ORCHARD
67
"Where is he?"
"He lies down in the wheat field a lot.”
"Well, I'll try,” said the sheriff. He turned to go, then
stopped. “Better get a license for that gun, Foster. You might
get into trouble.”
They left him there, gazing after them. Let them get the dog
if they could. He needed sleep. All he asked was a chance to
sleep. He rubbed his bloodshot eyes and sat down heavily ...
The two men moved toward the wheat field. Now and then
the sheriff whistled and called, but there was no response. The
dog had learned strategy. He was crawling away on his belly,
his head low, following the furrow so that no ripple of the
grain betrayed him. Finally he reached a culvert under the road
and lay there, shivering in the water.
The sheriff also knew strategy. He spoke cautiously to the
deputy. “Take a good look around, Joe,” he said. “Go over to
the orchard and whistle. That's where the dog howled from.
And look at the ground. See if it's been disturbed any. I'll
go on to the field.”
He called again, “Here, Rags. Good dog. Come on, Rags.”
But the dog lay under the culvert, motionless. He was still
there when the two men drove back to town.
The deputy was talkative. “I didn't see anything,” he said.
“But there's something up. The place looks like Foster hasn't
done a lick of work on it for a week. What is it, anyhow? Mrs.
Foster have insurance?”
"He couldn't collect without a body. That girl of Burford's,
most likely. They've been seen together.”
“What about the dog? Did you want him?”
“I had an idea he could tell me a thing or two if I could get
him. Unless Foster gets him first.”
The sheriff dropped Joe in town and drove forty miles to the
railroad junction. Here he questioned the men in the ticket


FAMILIAR FACES
office and around the station, but without result. A ticket for
a woman going to Indiana. Well, where in Indiana? The sheriff
didn't know. To ask Foster would make him suspicious, so
at last the sheriff drove home, depressed and uneasy.
But Foster was already suspicious. He saw the girl that night
and told her about the sheriff's visit. “What's bringing him
around?” he said angrily. “He didn't want that dog. Hell,
that wife of his wouldn't have a dog on the place.”
“So what? Shoot him and bury him.”
"The sheriff knows he's here. I can't kill him. Don't be a
damned fool.”
His tone was rough. Already his feeling for the girl was
changing. She both drew him and repelled him. If it hadn't
been for her, he would be sleeping at night, able to eat. But he
needed comfort that night. He tried to kiss her, but just then
they heard the familiar bark ending in a wail. The girl drew
back and shuddered.
The next day, in his office, the sheriff spent some time in
thought. He had nothing but a vague suspicion. Nellie Foster
might be safe enough. But there was that picture of Foster,
glaring at the dog with bloodshot eyes over the sights of his
gun. There was, too, the entire moral and physical disintegra-
tion of the man. Something had caused it. But what?
The sheriff had one line to follow. How had Nellie got the
message about her mother? The farm had no telephone, so it
had come either by letter or by telegram. He went to the post
office once more. There was no telegraph station in the village,
and messages were telephoned there from the junction.
This time, however, he went in his official capacity. “Just
keep this quiet,” he said. “Nellie Foster went to Indiana because
her mother was sick. Got any idea how she learned that? By
letter or telegram?"


THE DOG IN THE ORCHARD
1 69
The postmistress looked startled. “There's nothing wrong, is
there? About Nellie?”.
"I don't know. It's a queer business.”
“She didn't get a telegram. She might have had a letter. She
and her mother wrote pretty steady. There's just one thing-
maybe it doesn't mean anything.”
“What is it?”
"Foster's trying to sell his farm.”
"The hell he is!”
"Matt Saunders has wanted it for a good while. Foster was
in to see him today."
The sheriff went away, thoughtful. So Foster was getting
out. He didn't like the look of it. Yet when he met Matt Saun-
ders on the street, the matter seemed commonplace enough.
"Hear you're thinking of buying the Foster place, Matt.”
"Yeah. Been dickering for it for a couple of years.”
“And Foster's selling."
“Looks like it. Nellie wants to be near her mother, some-
where out West.”
But the sheriff was still not satisfied. That afternoon he sent
for Joe and gave him some instructions.
"Now, mind this,” he said. “We're outside the law, and
Foster can raise the devil if he sees you. Besides, I have an idea
he's dangerous.”
“I'll be all right,” said Joe.
“If he stays in the house you stay out.”
"You bet!” said Joe fervently.
But Foster did not stay in the house that night. At dusk the
dog had commenced once more its mournful wail, and when
Foster met the girl at the barn he did not even embrace her.
He stood off, red-eyed and unkempt, and his voice was hoarse
with rage and fear.


70
FAMILIAR FACES
“You got me into this,” he said brutally. “Now, get me out.
Listen to that! There must be some way to get him. He might
let a woman get near him.”
She nodded. “He might. He might think I was Nellie. See
here, get me some of her clothes-things she's worn-and some
shoes and stockings. And you'd better bring meat and a rope.”
It seemed a sound plan. Foster felt more cheerful as he went
back to his house. The weather had cleared, and the moon
was out.
He never saw Joe, hidden in Nellie's room, because as Foster
started up the stairs, the deputy slid out the window and
dropped lightly to the ground. But Foster was beyond fear or
suspicion that night. His only thought was the dog. Never-
theless, as he mounted the stairs he was trembling, and in the
bedroom, groping in the clothes closet, he made small whim-
pering noises, strange from his big body.
But the instinct for self-preservation was strong. He found
what he wanted, and went downstairs. The girl was on the
porch. She had slipped off most of her clothing, and the moon-
light made her flesh gleam white and desirable. But he did not
so much as look at her. All at once he hated her white body,
and suddenly it occurred to him that she hated him, too; that
only one thing united them now, and that was fear.
"Where's the meat?"
"I'll get it.”
"Well, hurry, you fool. I can't stay out all night.”
She was dressed in Nellie's clothes when he came back, and
she took the pan of meat without a word.
The dog was lying in the familiar spot in the orchard. He
was very weak. He breathed shallowly, his dull eyes closing,
then opening with a jerk. But his ears were alert, and his sen-
sitive nose. It was his nose that told him first. Meat, of course,
but something else, too. He staggered to his feet and stood


THE DOG IN THE ORCHARD
71
trembling violently. She was coming. She was coming at last.
With a low whimper he ran to her.
"All right,” called the girl. “I've got him."
He made no protest, save when Foster came near. Then he
showed his teeth. Tied and locked in the barn, he wolfed down
his food, and afterwards he slept. But there was no hope in him,
and once in the night he howled again. Foster, lying awake,
heard him and swore.
It was morning when Joe reported to the sheriff. He looked
pleased with himself.
“Get in?” asked the sheriff.
Joe nodded. “Looks like the story's straight, all right,” he
said. “Foster nearly caught me, at that. But I had time to look
around. Her clothes are gone, except the stuff she worked
in.”
The sheriff grunted. “Either the story's straight, or he's
smarter than I thought he was.”
Joe grinned. “Well, he wasn't so smart, at that,” he said.
“Look at this.”
He held out his hand, and in it was a plain gold wedding
ring.
"In the pocket of an apron," he said. “Like she took it off
when she was working. Ain't likely a woman would go on a
visit and leave a thing like that.”
"No," said the sheriff soberly. "No."
Once more he got into his car and drove out to the farm.
Already the atmosphere of the place had subtly changed, and
so had Foster. He had shaved and put on a fresh shirt, and the
porch had been swept. When the sheriff arrived, he was repair-
ing the chicken-yard fence, and he looked himself again.
"Thought I'd make another try for Rags,” the sheriff said.
"He kinda worries me. That is, unless Nellie's coming back
soon.”


72
FAMILIAR FACES
Foster shrugged. “I don't expect her. Her mother's pretty
sick.”
"You've heard from her, then?”
"Yeah. Had a letter a day or two ago. She won't be back for
a while.”
“Then I'd better see about the dog."
"Dog's gone,” said Foster. “I gave him to that girl of Bur-
ford's. She was going to visit some relatives over in Carter
County, and she said they'd take him. Left this morning."
The sheriff looked at him. “I think you're lying, Foster," he
said. “You haven't heard from Nellie, and you've been trying
to kill Rags for a week or more. Why?”
"He was a damned nuisance, that's why!”
"Where's Nellie, Foster ?”
“I've told you where she is. You crazy with the heat or
what?"
“Where is she? I mean, what town? What part of Indiana?"
Foster looked at the hatchet in his hand, then put it down
and straightened. “Now, get this and get it right, sheriff,” he
said. “I'm having no interference with my affairs. For a man
running for re-election, you're making a fool of yourself for
nothing. What business is it of yours where my wife is, or my
dog either? Now, get the hell out of here. I've got work to do."
The sheriff reflected ruefully on that as he drove back to
town. It was true. Nellie might be in Indiana. She might even
have forgotten her wedding ring. All he really had was Foster's
lie about the letter and a dog howling in the night; and now
even the dog was gone ...
Certainly the dog was gone. Early in the morning the girl
had led him out to her car and tied him in the back. But there
was no fight left in him. He lay where she placed him, hardly
moving through the long hours.
The girl, on the contrary, was cheerful. She felt that she had


THE DOG IN THE ORCHARD 75
fully aware that he had overplayed his hand. When Joe came
in, he was pulling on his pipe, the ring still in front of him.
"Foster's had a letter, Joe,” he said.
"From his wife?”
"From some woman. Maybe Nellie! maybe not. Ever see the
Burford girl's handwriting, Joe?”.
Joe blushed. “I had a note or two, 'way back," he admitted.
“Know it again?"
"I may have a letter around somewhere,” said Joe uncom-
fortably.
“I'd like to see it. None of my business what it's about. Think
you can find it?"
"I'll go home and look.”
An hour later the sheriff sat with the letter before him and
a deep conviction in his mind. The Burford girl had written
Foster's letter; it had gone to someone in Indiana in another
envelope and been sent back by request. The sheriff had an-
other conviction too: that Nellie Foster was dead and buried
somewhere on the farm. But where? He could not dig over
a hundred and sixty acres. He probably had no right to dig at
all, without more of a case than he had; and Foster was leaving.
In a day or two he would be gone.
If only he had the dog! He grunted. The dog was probably
dead, too.
But the dog was not dead. He was not only alive—he was on
his way home. It was now, although neither knew it, a race
between Foster and himself, between dog and man; the man to
close up his affairs and escape, the dog to prevent that escape;
the man living in terror, the dog living by sheer determination.
But the dog had instinct, the man only his wits.
It was a long distance, and the dog was wary. He traveled
mostly by night, resting during the day; but his route was as


76
FAMILIAR FACES
direct as a homing pigeon's. By what miracle he found his way,
no one would ever know.
But find it he did. On the night before Foster was to leave.
Joe came into the sheriff's office. The sheriff was sitting there,
his feet on his desk.
"Well, I'd better be going home,” he said. “No use sitting
here worrying, son.”
“Nothing doing, eh?”.
“Nothing. Maybe I'm getting too old for this job.”
Joe made ready to follow him. Then he remembered some-
thing. “Say,” he said, “if I didn't know that dog of Foster's was
a hundred miles from here, I'd say I'd seen him tonight.”
"Rags? You saw Rags?”
“Well, I don't know him well. Looked like him, though. He
was heading for Foster's place, and he was about all in."
The sheriff reached into the drawer of his desk and took out
an automatic. “Maybe I'm crazy with the heat, as Foster says,"
he observed. “Again, maybe I'm not. But I think that dog was
Rags, and if it was, I'm damned sure I know where he was
going. Better come along."
They drove out the country road. It was a moonlit night, and
a mile or so this side of Foster's, they overtook the dog. He was
moving along, his head and tail drooping, his whole body
showing exhaustion. The men got out of the car and followed
him on foot. They were only a few yards behind him when he
turned into Foster's lane. But he did not go to the house.
He went directly to the orchard, and once more lifted his
long tragic face to the sky and sent out his heartbroken cry.
The two men listened, their nerves strung taut. The wail ended,
the dog began to scratch at the earth. He scratched furiously,
, and Joe caught the sheriff's arm.
"Do you suppose she's there?” he whispered.
“I'm afraid so, poor woman.”


THE DOG IN THE ORCHARD
77
The sheriff started toward the house, Joe following him.
When they were close by, Foster flung open the door, but he
did not see the two men. He stood staring toward the orchard,
and as the dog wailed again he made a strange gesture, as of a
man defeated. Then he went back into the house and slammed
the door. The sheriff leaped for the porch.
He got there just too late. A shot rang out inside, and when
they entered, Foster was lying dead on the floor.
Hours later, when Nellie Foster's body had been found in
the orchard and taken away, the sheriff climbed wearily into
his car. Joe drove, and the sheriff sat back, his eyes closed, while
at his feet Rags slept the sleep of exhaustion. They were almost
home when he spoke.
“You know, son, it's a funny thing about Foster. He wasn't
fighting the law. He thought he had the law beat a mile. What
he was fighting was this dog."
"And the dog won,” said Joe.
"Yes," said the sheriff. “The dog won.”





IV
The Philanderer's Wife





T WAS at her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary
that Natalie Foster suddenly realized that she was
completely and utterly fed up with Wilmer. It
dawned on her suddenly, like a great white light, or as if she
had just had her eyes examined and was seeing him clearly for
the first time.
Good heavens, she thought, with a sense of panic, I don't
even like him!
She was horrified. It was frightful. Her very toes turned up
in her satin slippers, those toes that had followed Wilmer wher-
ever he wanted to go for twenty-five years and ached quite a
lot in the process. Yet there it was. She didn't love him. She
didn't even like him.
She looked guiltily around the table, but no one had noticed
anything. They had reached the terrapin, and people did not
notice much when there was terrapin. Even Wilmer at the
head of the table—where he sat was always the head of the
table-had temporarily ceased devoting himself to Nora Jewett,
who was the latest lady of his admiration.
Natalie looked at him carefully. He was still handsome. In-
deed, except for his added weight, externally he was merely a
fifty-year-old edition of the young Wilmer she had married
when she was eighteen. But she had the strangest possible
inclination to close her eyes so she would not have to look at
him.
She was rather bewildered. What had happened to her? It
was not Nora Jewett, sitting beside him and gazing at him
with a sort of fascinated attention. Nora was only one of a long
line of women who in their turn had worn Wilmer's orchids
81


82
FAMILIAR FACES
Wilmer! What a name! What could you do with a name like
that?-eaten his clandestine little dinners, and were left, so to
speak, holding the bag while Wilmer beat a strategic retreat
before he became seriously involved. Trust Wilmer for that.
No, it was not only his philandering, although that was a
part of it. It was simply that she was deadly tired of him. Tired
of living her life for him, while he lived his own. Tired of
staying out all night because he still liked to dance-with other
women, of course. Tired of leaving the opera because he was
bored. Tired of eating rich food because he had a stomach like
an ostrich. And very considerably tired of the women who fed
his vanity.
He would be elaborately casual about them.
"You might put Clare Anderson beside me at dinner to-
night,” he would say. “She's amusing.” Or: "I've got three
tickets for the theater. Amy Stockton said she'd like to go."
And in due time Clare or Amy would turn up with orchids
or gardenias pinned to them, and she herself would dangle
along like a third leg.
Not that he was unfaithful. He was too cautious for that.
Once she had opened a door unexpectedly and found him kiss-
ing the Clare or Amy of the moment. But she had backed out
neatly, and a week or so later he said he had made some money
in the market and gave her a diamond bracelet.
She looked down at her left arm and smiled faintly. She had
quite a number of diamond bracelets.
No, she quite definitely did not like him. And tonight, when
she should have been filled with loving memories, she liked
him less than ever.
For one thing, she felt that he was going to make a speech.
His eyes had wandered at last from Nora Jewett at his right
and were fixed rather blankly on the floral centerpiece, which


THE PHILANDERER'S WIFE
was bridal roses and white lilacs. He had put a hand to his tie
and was clearing his throat.
She caught young Jim's eye, and he nodded and winked at
her. Then, to Wilmer's irritated glare, he got up.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, “I don't think we will have
any speeches tonight. But I suggest that we drink one toast: to
a combination formed some twenty-five years ago, and which,
although I speak with all due modesty, has paid a handsome
dividend or two! In other words, to Mother and Dad—and the
children!” Dear Jim! Nothing sentimental. Nothing sappy, as
he would call it. She sat still as the company rose. “To Natalie
and Wilmer," somebody said. Then they sat down, and that
idiotic Jewett woman at once looked at Wilmer and said,
"Speech, speech.” The table took it up. What else could they
do? Jim raised his eyebrows at her, and Wilmer got slowly to
his feet.
"Always, on such occasions," he said, in his best platform
manner, “I am reminded of the Christian martyr who, having
whispered to the lion—".
She closed her eyes. For ten years he had used that story to
begin a speech. For ten years before that he had used Willie
and his uncle's morning prayer. There was a movement about
the table, as of people settling themselves to be bored again, or
still, as the case might be.
“So Nero said to the martyr, 'What did you say to the lion,
which saved your life?' And the martyr said, 'I told him if he
ate me he would have to make an after-dinner speech.'”
Mild laughter, wild applause from Nora Jewett. Thus en-
couraged, Wilmer drew a breath and went on. “Twenty-five
years ago I stood at the altar of a church, and took certain vows
which I have never regretted. I was a young man then; I am
still, I hope, a young man in what counts. And I am happy to


FAMILIAR FACES
see here, around my table, some of those who were present that
day.
“It is my hope that you will also all be present twenty-five
years from now. Maybe no gold at all by that time, but good
friends cannot be stored in a Kentucky vault. I can only say ...
I feel strongly ... My children ... My business ... My
convictions ..."
Natalie listened. It was, she thought, exactly as though
twenty-five years ago Wilmer had marched up the church aisle
alone and been married to himself. Perhaps in a way he had.
He talked for a long time. He had drifted to politics now.
The Harrisons, who lived out of town, were growing uneasy.
Joe Scott was looking for Higgins and fingering his empty
wineglass. Nancy was gazing at her father with a sort of
desperation. She had a baby at home, and she was nursing it.
In the end it was Nancy who saved the situation. She took
advantage of Wilmer's stopping for breath.
“I was not at the earlier ceremony, dad,” she said in her clear
young voice. “But I can't wait here for the next!”
Wilmer gave her a look of acute distaste and raised his glass.
"To a happy past and an even better future,” he said, and
having surveyed the table, gave Nora Jewett a long and intimate
look and sat down.
The Jewett woman was beside her as they moved into the
drawing room.
“What a beautiful speech," she said glowingly. “Wilmer has
such a lovely voice, hasn't he?”
Why, the woman was an idiot. She liked Wilmer. She might
even be, in a forty-ish sort of way, in love with him. Natalie
eyed her, smart in black taffeta with what were certainly Wil-
mer's orchids on her shoulder, and smiled faintly.
"I found it rather diverting,” she said. "He forgot me, you
see »


THE PHILANDERER'S WIFE.
85
Nora colored.
"That's ridiculous," she said. “It was all about you."
“It seemed to be mostly about the gold standard,” she ob
served lightly and moved on.
What was wrong with her that night? she wondered. After
all, she had endured Wilmer for twenty-five years. Was it the
prospect of twenty-five more that daunted her? Or was she
realizing that she had lived a purely vicarious life since the day
she stood at the altar? That for all that time she had lived in
Wilmer's house, ordered his meals, directed his servants, spent
his money, thought his thoughts, obeyed his wishes, and become
a sort of shadow of Wilmer himself.
She saw Nancy and her husband off, and Jim seemed amused.
“You were at the wedding, weren't you, Natalie?” he in-
quired. “Just for a minute I thought—"
“Don't be a fool, Jim," Nancy said hastily, and dragged him
off.
In the hall Natalie stopped. She caught a glimpse of herself
in the mirror. In the soft lights she looked no older than Jim,
but she knew that hard daylight would show all her forty-three
years. She saw a small determined chin, a still slender body, a
still considerable amount of dark hair, and a white satin wed-
ding dress, altered but still bridelike. In that dress she had
trailed up the aisle to meet Wilmer; and Wilmer had been a
tall young god in a morning coat and striped trousers.
She felt a small thrill of triumph, in that Wilmer could not
have worn his wedding clothes. Not by a good ten inches.
Back in the drawing room the men had joined the women.
Replete with food and Wilmer's best brandy, most of them
looked rather as though they had swallowed half a melon,
whole. But lately Wilmer had taken to wearing a belt, so he
bulged very mildly.
That belt was Wilmer's great secret. It was of heavy rubber


86
FAMILIAR FACES
webbing, and it was carefully locked away at night in his room.
The rest of the time it was on his person, along with what was
a lesser secret, known in the family as his damned denture.
She wondered if Nora Jewett suspected the belt. Or that
when Wilmer suddenly remembered in a restaurant that he had
to make a telephone call, it was because he had got a piece of
nut under the plate of the denture and was suffering the agonies
of the condemned.
They were together now. Wilmer was bending over her
tenderly, and Nora was looking quite happy and a trifle
nervous.
"Don't be such an idiot, Wilmer."
"Is it being idiotic to tell you how wonderful you are?"
Natalie did not hear, but she knew the usual procedure.
There had been a good many times when she had even heard it.
It was a nice technique. Natalie admitted that. It made Wilmer
feel young and gallant, and in the end it cost him nothing. Or
did it? Why should she think she was alone in being utterly
and completely fed up? Were there times when Wilmer too,
sans belt and denture, lay in his handsome bed in the next room
and wondered what biologic urge long ago had made him
order that morning coat, put a gardenia in his buttonhole and
watch one woman, out of a world full of attractive ones, walk
up a church aisle?
Young Jim was grinning at her.
“What's wrong?” he inquired. “Tired of your party?”.
"It isn't exactly my party. It was your father's idea."
"Well, it's been good, whoever it belongs to. Look here, not
letting the years get you down, are you?"
“I never expected to have a silver wedding, Jim. It's rather
devastating."
“Horse-feathers,” he said rudely. “You look like a girl. That's
honest. Come on and let's see the loot.”


THE PHILANDERER'S WIFE
He led her away. Nora and Wilmer were on a sofa now,
oblivious of the rest. And in the library—where the “loot” had
been gathered—Jim ignored it and took her by the shoulders.
“See here," he said, “there has been something wrong all
evening. What is it? If it's that smeary Jewett woman, forget it.
You know him. He's just taking her for a ride, and she likes it.”
“He likes it too.”
“Of course he does. But there's nothing to be jealous of.”
She stared at him incredulously.
“Jealous!” she said. “You think I am jealous, Jim?"
“Well, what else is it?” he demanded reasonably. "The old
boy's having the time of his life, but it doesn't mean a darn
thing."
She stood staring at the table. What Jim called the “loot” was
there. It ranged from silver salad bowls, vases, and candelabra
to after-dinner coffee sets. And remembering the numbers of
silver salad bowls, vases, candelabra and after-dinner coffee sets
she already possessed she shut her eyes hastily.
"I'm not jealous, Jim," she said. “I—".
But here she stopped. She could not tell Jim that she was fed
up with his own father. After all, what did he know of either
of them? He had been away at school and college, and now
he was in business and had a flat of his own.
“I suppose I'm tired,” she finished.
“Buncombe!” said Jim disrespectfully, and kissed her. “Get
this riffraff out and have a good sleep. And if you don't need
that cigarette tray I can use it.”
It was perhaps unfortunate that as they went out Wilmer and
Nora were in the hall, and that Wilmer's arms seemed confused
with Nora's wrap as he put it around her. But Wilmer was
quite bland.
"Hello, there,” he said. “Wondered where you'd got to.
Nora's going.”


88
FAMILIAR FACES
“So I see,” said Natalie pleasantly. "Thanks again for the
lovely salad bowl, Nora.”
"What I was wondering,” said Wilmer, “is why let the
evening die. It's still young. Wait a while and we can go on
some place and dance. How'd you like that, Nora?”
“I'd love it,” said Nora fervently.
Jim whistled and picked up his hat.
"You're too young for me, you people," he said, and swung
out of the house. But Natalie looked squarely at her problem, in
the shape of Wilmer, and shook her head.
"I'm tired,” she said, "and my feet hurt. Run along and have
a good time, Nora. I'll see if any of the others care to go."
It was three in the morning when Wilmer came in. She was
still lying in her bed, and she heard him moving cautiously.
She heard the lock turn when he put away his belt, and the
heavy breathing almost immediately afterward which told her
that he was sleeping the sleep of the just and virtuous.
She was moved to a vague admiration. What a digestion he
had, and what nerves! He could eat and drink, dance until
morning, and be up and at his office the next day, without turn-
ing a hair. And for the best part of twenty-five years she had
trailed along. Only her stomach wasn't so good as his. Or her
feet either. She reflected without particular bitterness on the
years of nights in spike-heeled slippers, with her toes jammed
together until they screamed, and the hours of torture while she
either watched or followed Wilmer about some dance floor or
other.
After a time, her feet still bothering her, she got up and, sit-
ting on the edge of the bathtub, soaked them in hot water. But
her mind was moving in circles. He did not love her. It was a
long time since she had been more than somebody to sit at the
foot of his table. And to come home to, of course. That was
important. He could never be really trapped by any woman,
Ouer.


THE PHILANDERER'S WIFE
89
so long as she was there. He could play about, send his flowers,
eat his surreptitious little luncheons with this one or that; but
so long as he had her he was safe.
She was, she reflected grimly, Wilmer's fire escape.
When she went back to bed he was snoring. It was a real
snore now. It started softly, rose gradually to a hideous cre-
scendo of sound, and was followed by a long silence when he
did not breathe at all. Then it began all over again. It was
inexorable, inescapable. And she had listened to it for twenty-
five years.
Why?
She lay back among her pillows and considered that. Why?
Who needed her? Not the children any more, and certainly
not Wilmer, save to run his house and attend to his comfort.
Well, she had done that for a long time. Now if somebody else
would be willing to take over
After a while she switched on the bedside lamp and reached
for her memorandum pad. It had some notes on it, and she read
them carefully.
“Remind Wilmer about fitting at tailor's.”
“See butcher. Wilmer says bills too high.”
“Call florist.”
She eyed the last for some time. There had been a mistake
about that bill, and along with flowers for debutantes and a
funeral or two there were three boxes of red roses-my love is
like a red, red rose-for Nora Jewett. In the morning she would
have to have that rectified, being tactful, of course. She would
call Miss Parker at Wilmer's office.
“This is Mrs. Foster, Miss Parker. I think there is some mis-
take about the florist's bill. Will you have them look it over?"
And Miss Parker would fix it up. She had been fixing such
matters probably for a good many years.
She sat with the pad and pencil in her hand. In her pretty


90
FAMILIAR FACES
nightdress, which Wilmer had never seen and would not have
noticed if he had, she looked surprisingly young and vivid. Her
mouth was humorous, and even under the thin coating of cold
cream her skin was taut and clear. She looked indeed rather
like a schoolgirl doing her sums. As a matter of fact, she was
doing sums.
II
At three o'clock the next afternoon she presented herself at
Wilmer's office. The pad was in her bag, which gave her some
courage. But Miss Parker's blank surprise rather unsettled her
again.
“I'm sorry, Miss Parker,” she said. “I have come on a matter
of business.”
Miss Parker raised her eyebrows and Natalie looked around
her with some curiosity. It was years since she had been there.
"My home is my home,” Wilmer had said ponderously, “but
my business is my business. I don't want them mixed.”
Well, one thing was certain. Miss Parker would never mix
anything. She was drab and dour. Nevertheless, Natalie felt
that there was sympathy in her eyes. How many luncheon ap-
pointments she must have made, how many orchids and red,
red roses she must have paid for! She smiled at her.
“Did you know that we celebrated our twenty-fifth wedding
anniversary yesterday?" she inquired.
“Yes. I-Mr. Foster mentioned it. I should have congratulated
you, Mrs. Foster.”
Natalie smiled again and got up.
"I wonder just why?” she inquired; and leaving Miss Parker
with her mouth open turned to greet Wilmer in the doorway.
It was a nice office. It had plenty of sun, and a new gold desk
clock she had never seen before. She did not think that Wilmer


THE PHILANDERER'S WIFE 91
ran much to gold clocks himself, but that no longer mattered.
She went in, and Wilmer closed the door and took his seat
behind the desk. Which, of course, immediately became the
head of the table.
“There's nothing wrong, is there?” he inquired.
“I wouldn't say that, Wilmer."
He looked definitely uneasy.
“I suppose there is some reason for your coming here. As
you know,”
She smiled brightly.
“Oh, yes, there is really a very good reason," she explained.
“You see, I think I have served my sentence.”
"Your what?”
“My sentence, Wilmer. Twenty-five years, you know. I'sup-
pose I should have had something off for good behavior, but it's
too late for that, isn't it?"
He stared at her.
“What's all this about twenty-five years?” he demanded.
“Am I to understand—”
“Oh!” she said pleasantly. “You do see it, don't you! That's
very nice of you, Wilmer. It helps such a lot.”.
"Helps what? What on earth are you talking about?”
“Twenty-five years of marriage, Wilmer. Our marriage,” she
explained. “It has been a long time, but-well, I think it is
over.”
He looked rather as she had seen him look when he had sud-
denly found a piece of nut under his denture; both shocked
and alarmed.
"Are you crazy, Natalie? Or are you sick?” he demanded,
when he could speak.
“Dear me, no, Wilmer,” she reassured him. “I'm quite all
right. Perhaps I'm a trifle excited. I've been making plans all


92
FAMILIAR FACES
morning. And then, too, I am not very good at arithmetic, and
everything had to be multiplied by twenty-five. I had to add
too."
"Add what?” said Wilmer thickly.
She dived into her bag and produced the pad. It was covered
with neat figures, and Wilmer gazed at it in stupefaction.
"It works out like this,” she explained. “Roughly, of course.
Five hundred dinners, not counting luncheons, cocktail parties
and unexpected business guests for meals. About five thousand
miles of dancing in high-heeled slippers, and incidental lack of
sleep. Twenty-five summer houses, opened, run and closed.
And-on a conservative estimate-some forty women—I'm
sorry but I haven't a very good memory—to compete with. Of
course that's merely a start. I have a lot more.”
"You are crazy," said Wilmer. “I won't listen to any more
nonsense. I've supported you for all these years, and in luxury.
Just because you take a fool notion to be jealous"
It was her turn to stare at him.
"Jealous?” she said. “Why, Wilmer, you don't understand,
after all, do you? I'm not jealous. I'm just tired of-well, I sup
pose you can call it the job.”
It was too bad, really. All he had was his vanity, and she had
simply put that on the floor and stepped on it. It was as though
a large and imposing balloon had suddenly had a pin stuck in
it, and was expiring with a sickening hiss.
"I'm really sorry, Wilmer,” she said, more gently. “But I've
lived your life for a long time, while you have lived your own.
And I'm tired. You are too strong for me. I can't follow you
any longer. I don't even want to. You see," she added rather
inconsequentially, "you have a better digestion than I have.”
He rallied enough to look astounded.
"Digestion?” he said. “What in God's name has that got to
do with it?"


THE PHILANDERER'S WIFE
93
"Stomach, liver, Wilmer. Remember your schoolbooks. You
can eat and drink at any hour of the night and take care of it;
I can't. I suppose more people are divorced because of that sort
of thing than—"
"Divorce? Are you telling me you want a divorce?”
“That was the general idea.”
"What for? For God's sake, on what grounds? Just because
you're tired of me and want to marry somebody else?"
"Don't be an idiot. There is nobody else.”
He was staring at her across the desk, as though he had never
seen her before. As a matter of fact, he had not really seen her
for a long time. What he saw was a very pretty woman wrapped
in silver fox-his silver fox, by gad!—who had suddenly ceased
to be his wife and the mother of his children, and was now stat-
ing that she was completely and utterly fed up with him.
"Too little humor and too many other women, Wilmer," she
said. “You see, competition may be the life of trade, but it's not
so good in marriage. What I thought,” she added, still pleas-
antly, “was that you could marry somebody else, Wilmer. Lots
of women would jump at the chance. I think you ought to
marry again. You won't like being alone.”
"I suppose you have that arranged, too!”
"Well, not exactly. I did think of Nora Jewett. She knows
how to run a house, and she's practically tireless. Her digestion
must be good, too. I've looked all over the field, Wilmer. It's
pretty extensive, but she looks like the best bet."
That, however, was a mistake. It was as though somebody
had put a finger over the hole in the balloon.
“So that's it!” he said. “I thought so. Because I took Nora
dancing last night when you didn't go~"
"No, Wilmer," she said. “It is really because I didn't care
whether you took Nora dancing. It's because I haven't cared for
a long time. I used to care, but now, you see, it doesn't matter."


94
FAMILIAR FACES
He digested that slowly, and the hissing became almost
audible again. He seemed indeed to shrink in his chair, to
become something almost pitiable.
"I should think,” he said heavily, “after twenty-five years—"
“No, Wilmer. Don't be sentimental. I'm sorry for you, and
you're sorry for yourself. That makes it unanimous, but it
doesn't change anything."
She cried a little after she got into the limousine. Cried for
her lost years and her lost illusions. She had loved him so much
and so long; and there were memories which she could not
destroy. The day Jim was born, and the queer look on Wilmer's
face when he looked into the bassinet; a combination of shock
and pride.
“Ugly little devil, isn't he?"
She had still been in the hospital, however, when she learned
that he had taken one of the nurses out to dinner. That memory
was still fresh, after all these years.
Why had he done it? Were women so essential to him? Was
his vanity a consuming flame which had to be fed, every so
often? Or—she stirred uneasily—was all his philandering a
manifestation of an inferiority sense? Was he, under his pomp
and circumstance, merely a little boy who had never grown up,
attempting to prove to himself that he was a man?
III
She told Nancy that day. It was not easy. This young genera-
tion was severe with its elders. She was very nervous as she
waited in Nancy's smart little living room while a smart little
maid carried word of her arrival. And her feet hurt. They hurt
terribly. It was as though all the years of following Wilmer in
tight high-heeled slippers—he always noticed women's feet-
had piled up in accumulated agony.
In the end she slipped off her pumps, and it was thus that


THE PHILANDERER'S WIFE 95
Nancy found her; a pretty, very maternal young Nancy, who
had rigid ideas about so many things.
“Hello, mother," she said. “What's the matter with your
feet?"
“They hurt,” she said mildly.
Nancy eyed the pumps.
"I should think they would. Why wear such things anyhow?
At your age you might at least be comfortable.”
She eyed Nancy. Nancy had no humor. She was like Wilmer
in that. It wasn't going to be easy. No, it was going to be
damned hard.
"That's what I came in to discuss, Nancy,” she said soberly.
"I think I've earned a rest. I have just told your father so."
“What sort of rest?” said Nancy suspiciously.
"A rest from your father.”
There was a considerable silence. Nancy got up and lighted
a cigarette.
"Maybe I'm plain dumb," she said, “but I don't get it. What
sort of rest? Europe? Or a sanitarium? Or a—"
"I was thinking of a divorce, Nancy,” she explained. “I could
merely go away, but you know your father. He needs somebody
around. He ought to be free to marry again. He likes a home to
—well, to go back to. And I'm so tired, Nancy. I'm not so
strong as he is. I can't go all day and all night.”
"Look here,” said Nancy abruptly. "Is it another woman?
Because you know how Dad is. He plays around a little, but it
doesn't mean anything."
“Maybe I am tired of showing the world it doesn't mean
anything.”
But Nancy's face was creased with disapproval.
“Well, I think it's plain crazy. At your agel And Father's. It's
hardly decent. You'll miss him, too. Maybe you think you
won't, but you will."


98
FAMILIAR FACES
From beyond it there came a soft but undeniable sound. It
began gently, and even as she listened it increased in a crescendo
until it reached a snort that was like an explosion.
Wilmer was asleep.
Life was not too simple for Wilmer after Natalie had gone.
He was bewildered and hurt, as only the guilty can be.
"I don't know what the hell got into her," he said to Jim.
“Maybe she's sick, I don't know. It isn't like her.”
“Maybe she's only tired,” said Jim. "You move pretty fast,
dad.”
But Wilmer, remembering that last conversation, was not
so sure. He merely grunted, and put a finger surreptitiously
under the upper edge of his belt. It had been a little tight
lately.
"I've had a letter from her,” said Jim. "She's at the farm,
resting. Funny thing, she says her feet are better. I never knew
they bothered her. She's tramping around in tennis shoes and
doing some painting. I didn't know she painted.”
"Used to do water colors," said Wilmer heavily. “Pretty bad,
but she liked it.”
One day he lunched with Nora Jewett, a Nora who was all
sweetness and light, and gave her an expurgated edition of
Natalie's revolt. Nora, who had already heard rumors, looked
astounded.
“But, Wilmer!” she said. “I've never heard of such a thing!
What on earth happened to her?”.
"You're asking me!” said Wilmer grimly.
“After all you've given her, Wilmer! Just to walk off and
leave you! It's well, it's incredible. That lovely house and
everything. And you yourself, Wilmer. You're so frightfully
attractive. I'm sorry, my dear."


THE PHILANDERER'S WIFE
99
She reached over and touched his hand; but there was no
thrill in that to Wilmer just then. There was indeed no thrill
in anything.
"Well, let's eat,” he said heavily.
But Nora was not interested in food at the moment. She was
being brave and tragic.
“You don't suppose,” she said gently, “that there is somebody
else, do you, Wilmer? Some other man, I mean?”
Wilmer gave a jerk.
“How the devil do I know?” he said, savagely eying the
menu. “What she said was that my digestion was better than
hers.”
"Your digestion!"
“That seemed to be the general idea.”
“But I don't understand it, Wilmer. It doesn't sound rational.
Just because you're big and strong—"
She leaned across the table and reached for his hand again.
But Wilmer was in no mood for dalliance. With a sort of
terror he jerked it away.
"Let's order some food and get out of here,” he said gruffly.
He was wary throughout the rest of the meal. Why, damn
it all, the woman was actually possessive. And now there was
no Natalie, no safe refuge, no fire escape. Nora, however, con-
tinued to radiate sweetness and light.
“You always have your friends, you know, Wilmer," she
reminded him. “And you always have me. I-I'm very fond
of you. You know that. And we have much the same tastes,
haven't we? I mean, we like the same things.”
“So Natalie observed,” said Wilmer, goaded.
“She said that?”
“She said you had a good digestion, and were practically
tireless. She seemed to think those were necessary qualifica-
tions.”


100
FAMILIAR FACES
"Is that supposed to be funny?"
“She didn't seem to think so.”
“I've got a stomach like an ostrich and can dance all night!"
But here Nora rose, breathing hard, and picked up her bag.
"You might tell Natalie for me," she said, “that if she intends
to hand her troubles to me, I am simply not interested.”
Wilmer was extremely lonely after that. Not that he missed
Nora. He was well out of that. But that group of which he and
Natalie had been the center had mysteriously disintegrated
without her. And the whole situation had changed. When out
of sheer desperation he took some woman out to dinner and
to dance, the thrill had gone. What is more, he did not feel safe
with them. Also he tired more easily. By midnight he would
he looked surreptitiously at his watch, and when he got home
he would drop into his bed, not always to sleep.
Around him the house was empty and silent; and this empti-
ness and silence would close down on him like a weight on the
chest.
One night he got up and glanced into Natalie's room. He
had not really seen it for a good many years, but now, empty as
it was, it might have been any room anywhere. On impulse he
looked into her closet, but it was empty too. He stood for quite
a long time, staring into it. What had happened, anyhow? He
had been faithful, after his fashion. There had never been any
real competition, as she called it.
He went back to bed, but not to sleep.
It was about this time that he began to go to his clubs again.
He was fed up with women. He wanted male society. But he
was a stranger to most of them. The men would merely nod
at him and pass on. He would drink a solitary highball and
then go home, to a solitary dinner.
One morning he forgot his belt. He did not miss it for some
hours. Then he looked down and saw an unmistakable bulge


THE PHILANDERER'S WIFE
101
where there was usually a neat flatness. But he was extremely
comfortable without it, and after that he seldom wore it.
It must have been about that time, with Natalie gone for
two months, that Miss Parker came in one day with the florist's
bill.
“I thought I'd better ask about this, Mr. Foster,” she said,
looking worried. “There are only the flowers for that funeral
on it. If there is any mistake"
He sat back and eyed her. For a long time now, years and
years, she had protected him as best she could. She had been
his watchdog, and a damned unattractive watchdog at that.
Nevertheless,
"It's all right, Miss Parker," he said. "Hereafter we send
flowers only to funerals. You might remember that.”
“Funerals? Only funerals?”
“Now, listen, Parker," he said. “You and I have formed a
nice little partnership for a number of years. I made mistakes
and you covered them up. Wasn't that it?"
She Aushed to the eyes.
"I've done what I considered my duty,” she said primly.
He looked at her thoughtfully. She was probably the only
woman he had inspected thoughtfully for a long time, if ever.
She was a faithful soul, he reflected. He had used her for a long
time, and what had she got out of it? She had a mother to sup-
port somewhere in the Bronx, and he had a shrewd idea that
her real life lay in the office and nowhere else. Suddenly he
was sorry for her. He had not been sorry for anyone but himself
for a good many years, and the new sensation pleased him.
"All right,” he said. “That's over. No more mistakes, Parker.
A new leaf for both of us. So how about a little party to con-
firm it?”
She looked horrified! She took a step back and threw out
her hands.


102
FAMILIAR FACES
“Oh, no!” she said. “I'm sorry, but please, Mr. Foster!"
He stared at her. So that was what she thought of him, after
all these years. Not only Natalie. This drab girl suspected him
too. For all of a minute he was completely speechless.
"Don't be a fool,” he said dryly. “I'd like to buy you a dinner,
that's all. I have no other designs on you. And for God's sake
don't look like that. What do you think I am, anyhow?"
Miss Parker gulped.
“I'm sorry,” she said. "I'd be very glad to have dinner with
you, Mr. Foster. And about this bill?”
“Damn the bill,” he said violently.
Some hours later, riding uptown in a taxicab, he wondered
what had possessed him to ask her. She was evidently still
uneasy. She sat far away in a corner of the cab, and she looked
like a picked chicken.
“I wish you'd cheer up,” he said. “This is supposed to be a
celebration.”
“What are we celebrating?"
“My reform.”
"It's a funny way to do it, isn't it?" she inquired surprisingly.
Just what reply he would have made Wilmer never knew.
There was a sudden terrific crash, and the taxi stopped in mid-
career and proceeded at once to go to pieces. To his great sur-
prise Wilmer found himself clutching Miss Parker's virgin
body to his heart, and the next moment, and simultaneously,
they hit the pavement together.
But he had no time for further surprises. To the rattle of an
elevated train and a piercing shriek from the lady of the mo
ment, he quietly and firmly fainted away.
Natalie was still in the country when she got the word.
To tell the truth, she was slightly fed up with the country.


104
FAMILIAR FACES
"Well, that's the queer part of it. Miss Parker was with him.
She's got a broken rib.”
"Miss Parker!"
"That's right. He was taking her home or something. Per-
fectly okay, but the papers have it, and of course it's a story."
She stood holding the telephone. There was something queer
here, something wrong. The setup was all wrong.
“Good gracious, Jim,” she said at last. “How lonely he must
have been!”
She took the night train down, and when Wilmer roused
from a drugged sleep it was to see her familiar figure at a
window. He blinked and stared.
"Is that you, Natalie?"
She came to the bed and looked down at him. He had a very
black eye, he was unshaven, and the hospital nightshirt was
an unhandsome thing. But thus helpless she felt closer to him
than she had for a good many years. All his vanity was gone,
and he looked at her out of that awful eye with a strange new
pathos.
"I thought I'd better come back," she said. “You don't seem
to manage very well by yourself.”
“Manage!” he said thickly. “It's been hell. Straight hell.”
He reached and took her hand.
“About Parker,” he said. “I assure you, Natalie-”.
He told her the story, still holding her hand; and having
thus, as it were, cleaned the slate, fell quietly asleep. Like a
child, she thought. A child who expects infinite forgiveness.
And he was her child. She knew that now.
Maybe all marriage was like that in time. She did not know.
All she knew was that he needed her, and she was here.
Some hours later he roused. There was a pretty young nurse
in the room, and he eyed her appreciatively.
"Listen, Natalie," he said. “I wish you'd send me a barber.


THE PHILANDERER'S WIFE
105
And how about some pajamas? I feel like the devil in this
thing.”
It was while she was at the house gathering up his belong-
ings that afternoon that she came across the belt. It was lying
discarded in the chiffonier drawer, and she stood looking down
at it for some time. It was, she felt, symbolic of something.
Perhaps that with her going had gone his pride. And some-
thing else too. His vitality, even his youth. He had looked old
and tired that day in his hospital bed.
She put it back and closed the drawer. Someday perhaps
he would wear it again, and so fortified wander away from her.
But now she knew that he would always come back again.
Suddenly she realized that her feet were hurting her once
more, and with an air of determination she kicked off her high-
heeled shoes and put on her comfortable country ones. The
relief was exquisite, and she was still savoring it when Higgins
brought up an enormous box of flowers.
It was filled to the top with red roses—my love is like a red,
red rose—and she wondered without resentment just what he
had sent to the pretty nurse.





One Night in Spring





HE news came to the station house by telephone.
- There it caused little or no excitement, but a young
police reporter named Andy roused from a half-doze
by the radiator and pricked up his ears like an excited terrier.
“Lansdale?” said the sergeant, shoving his gum into his
cheek. “All right. Don't shout. Who are you, where are you,
and what's the matter?”
There was a silence while the sergeant listened to excited
squeaking, and Andy stood up on two long legs, one of which
was asleep.
"Brutally attacked?” drawled the sergeant. “The missus, eh?
What's the name again? George Lansdale. All right. Somebody
will be over."
He hung up and Andy, largely on one leg, made a frenzied
and unsuccessful attempt to find his hat. It had fallen behind
the radiator, however. He gave it up and hobbled to the door.
“If that was the George Lansdales, it's plenty hot,” he said.
“Try to get along without me for a while, will you?”
The sergeant, however, ignored him. And Andy limped out-
side to where his ancient car, Tillie the Toiler, was parked
against a fire hydrant. But Tillie was in a refractory mood.
She purred and subsided until he was frantic.
“Get going, you damned old teakettle!” he yelped. “Get
going, can't you?"
At last she relented. She gasped, roared, and then settled
down to work; and the patrol car passing at that moment,
Andy'settled down on its tail. He was only a block or so behind
when Alex and Bert, the two occupants, leaving their engine
109


110
FAMILIAR FACES
running, got out and hurried up the steps of the impressive
Lansdale house.
He almost made it. He heard the door open and made a final
rush. But a black cat on the bottom step sent him sprawling,
and as he picked himself up the door closed again. He stood
there, a defeated, bitter, and not too clean young man, to whom
life was áshes and in whom hope was dead. Nevertheless, he
made an attempt.
He went up the steps and putting a finger on the doorbell
held it there. After two minutes of this the door was jerked
open by an irate red-faced officer.
“Take your finger off that bell,” he roared. “And get out
before I kick you out.”
“Listen, Alex," Andy pleaded. “I won't bother you. The
papers will have it anyhow. These are important people.”
“Yeah?” said Alex. “I guess it wasn't important when you
took that two dollars off me with crooked dice.”
“They weren't loaded, you big bum."
Alex merely slammed the door in his face, and Andy walked
down the steps and kicked listlessly at the cat. But the despair
was purely temporary. If there was the alertness of the terrier
in him there was also the tenacity of the bulldog, with perhaps
just a touch of bloodhound. He was down, but he was not yet,
so to speak, out. He began to survey the premises.
The house was in the center of a solidly built block, with a
tradesman's entrance which on examination proved to be
locked. There might, however, be an alley behind it. Walking
rapidly he turned the corner, slowed down as he passed a sus-
picious night watchman with a flashlight, and then picked
up speed again.
There was an alley. True, the gate to the Lansdale back
yard was locked, and the high wooden fence had a strand or
two of barbed wire on the top. But Andy had not been four


ONE NIGHT IN SPRING
III
years at college and three on a newspaper without knowing his
fences. He took a cautious look around, pulled himself up and
was finally precariously balanced on the top. Then he stepped
gingerly over the wires, peered into the darkness beneath and
prepared to drop.
It was his leg that betrayed him. One minute he was, as one
may say, czar of all he surveyed. The next he slipped, heard a
long tearing sound and landed in a row of garbage cans below
with a devastating crash.
This was followed at once by feminine screams from the
rear of the house, and a door opened.
“Police!" a voice called. “Get the police. Somebody's in the
yard.”
Andy, sitting among the ruins, was examining himself.
Nothing was apparently broken, although his spine felt as
though it had been driven several inches upward. He was still
Andy, however.
"Nobody's here but just us chickens," he said.
The noise ceased, and a woman who looked as though she
might be the cook came out and gazed suspiciously into the
darkness.
“Who is it?" she asked.
Andy got up. Aside from the fact that he seemed to have
acquired a number of coffee grounds and bits of certain vege-
tables, he was all right. But he was immediately aware that
certain portions of his anatomy were being strangely exposed
to the cool spring night. He put his hand behind him and made
a brief examination.
"Oh, my God!” he muttered.
Nevertheless, he moved on, into the light from the open
door.
"I came with the police,” he explained. “Your gate was
locked, and that wire- Has anybody in there got a safety pin?”
10


114
FAMILIAR FACES
“Mrs. Lansdale insists she has no idea who she was.”
Alex took off his cap and scratched his head.
“It's screwy, if you ask me,” he said. “How'd she get it?
What's the idea anyhow? Mrs. Lansdale is asleep in bed. She
wakes up, hearing somebody in the hall. At first she thinks it's
her husband, according to the butler. Then her door opens, a
redheaded girl steps in, gives her a good look, picks up a silver
box full of cigarettes, throws it at her and goes out. Say, listen,
doc. Maybe it was her husband. She makes up this tale
and—”
The doctor apparently stiffened. Certainly his voice did.
“I assure you," he said coldly, “that Mr. Lansdale is abso
lutely incapable of such an act. He has been a most devoted
husband.”
With his departure Traymore took the two officers up the
stairs. The hall was empty, and Andy made a quick survey. He
found a rear staircase and climbed it cautiously, to find himself
safely on the second floor, and to hear Alex's voice coming
from an open door a few yards away.
"If that's all you have to say, madam "
“That's all. I never saw her before, and I never want to see
her again,” said a young and angry voice.
"You state”
"I haven't stated anything."
“I'm sorry, Mrs. Lansdale. You see, I have to make my report.
If you would only—".
"Oh, damn the report. I wish that old fool Traymore had
minded his business. Go away, won't you? I've got a head-
ache."
It was almost three in the morning when the house settled
down finally. Alex and Bert had gone. Andy, grinning cheer-
fully, had heard the front door slam and the car drive away.
After that he heard Traymore marshaling the women servants


ONE NIGHT IN SPRING
115
up to bed, and beat a retreat into an empty bedroom. But not
before he had heard Traymore giving certain orders.
"I want no blabbing," he said, in his thin old voice. “There's
been too much talk already. We'll have reporters here to-
morrow, and if one of you says anything she'll lose her job.”
Only the cook's voice replied.
"All right, grandpa,” she said. “But what happened to the
detective who tore his pants.”
"He went with the others, I suppose," said Traymore wearily.
“And don't call me grandpa, Mrs. Bartlett. I won't have it.”
With the passing of the small army Andy felt better. He
moved forward along the hall. Outside Mrs. Lansdale's door
he was about to knock, when he heard a voice from within.
The transom was open, and Mrs. Lansdale, shock or no shock,
was talking over the telephone.
"Is that Mr. Garrett? ... Listen, Archie, can you find
George? I simply have to see him. . i. I know all that, but
listen, where is he? I want to talk to him. . . . You won't tell
me where he is? ... Oh, well, if that's the way you feel about
it, all right. All right, I said. Good night.”
She slammed down the telephone, and suddenly Andy
pricked up his ears. She was crying, crying out loud, like a
child. Andy was embarrassed. He was afraid of crying women.
They went through his defenses too easily. Anyhow, let the
poor kid alone for a while, and to hell with the story.
He looked around him. The hall was dimly lit, and the
bedroom door across stood open. He stepped inside, closed the
door, lit a cigarette and with what remained of the match
surveyed his surroundings. It was evidently a man's room, bear-
ing signs of recent occupancy, and he whistled.
“So that's the way it is!” he reflected. “Too much money, too
much drink, too many late hours, and then the smash. It gets
them all in the end."


116
FAMILIAR FACES
He listened at the door. All was quiet outside-even Lida-
so he took a chance and turned on the light. He was all terrier
now. Yes, it was evidently George Lansdale's room. A closet
door stood open, revealing boot and shoe racks and a row of
carefully pressed clothes. There were, however, certain dis-
crepancies. Thus, the bathroom revealed no toothbrush, and
Andy, who had been taught from childhood to use one three
times a day like a little gentleman, raised his eyebrows. There
was also (b) no shaving kit, (c) no hairbrushes, and (d) no
pajamas laid out on the bed, where, according to the movies,
old Traymore should have laid them, carefully folded, some
hours before.
It made, all said, quite a picture. Andy whistled softly to
himself and stepped out into the hall. The sound of weeping
had ceased, but there was no reply to his knock. He shrugged.
Then he opened the door and stepped in. At once he wished he
hadn't, for Lida Lansdale, once glamour girl and now queen of
café society, was still crying. She was lying face down on her
bed, and sobbing hopelessly into a pillow.
He felt horribly unhappy. He advanced a step or two into
the room.
“Look," he said. “You'd better not do that. You'll feel awful
tomorrow."
She whipped around, sat up and stared at him. She looked
young and pathetic, with her eyes swollen and a strip of ad-
hesive plaster on her forehead. Andy gulped.
“It's all right,” he said reassuringly. “Don't scream, or any-
thing like that. I'm harmless. I just thought-"
“Who are you?”
"You can call me Andy," he said. “That is, if you care to
call me anything. I came with the police and I thought I'd
hang around. In case another redheaded hussy appeared,” he
added with an engaging grin.


ONE NIGHT IN SPRING
· 117
Mrs. Lansdale, however, did not seem to find it engaging.
Her expression had changed from fright to incredulity, and
then to pure fury.
“You can get out of here and get out fast,” she said, moving
her hand toward the bell. “This rings in my maid's room, and
I warn you—"
“Don't ring it,” he said anxiously. “You can trust me. I mean
that. I know I don't look like much just now. I had some diffi-
culty getting in, but—".
“I thought you came with the police?"
"Well, I did in a way. Only there was an argument. Matter
of fact, I came over the fence.”
She leaned back and stared at him.
"A reporter!” she said. “Wouldn't you know it! A reporter.
That simply ties it. All right, Mr. Reporter. Out you go, or I'll
have you thrown out, and over the fence at that.”
But Andy had got back some of his dignity by that time.
"As you like," he said, backing toward the door. “If you
want the story published as it is now, that's up to you. But
the way it stands, it's a laugh. You hear something, wake up,
there's a redheaded girl standing in the door, and without a
word she heaves a cigarette box at you and goes away again.
Who's going to believe it?”
"It's true.”
He saw by her face that it was, and he moved nearer the bed.
“Look, sister," he said. “I've always kind of liked you. Even
since you've been running around, and not always under your
own steam either. When the gossip guys began to talk about
you I wanted to kill them. You needn't worry. I'm just telling
you. And it isn't any use lying to me. Not to papa. That red-
headed girl was George Lansdale, wasn't it?"
She looked startled, but she recovered quickly.
“I'm not talking,” she said stubbornly.


118
FAMILIAR FACES
Andy grinned.
“On advice of your lawyer, I suppose. Mr. Garrett. That
would be Archibald Jefferson de Lancy Garrett, I guess. Well, I
hope Archie doesn't mind being wakened again out of a good
sleep.”
“You wouldn't dare!"
“Wouldn't I? Listen, if I hit George Lansdale on the nose
with my fist—which I intend to do what of it? But if George
Lansdale walks into his wife's room and tosses a cigarette box
into her face, either it's news or I suppress it. That's up to
you."
She said nothing.
“Now listen to me," he went on. “Your story was good
enough for a hick policeman with an eye for a pretty girl. But
it's crazy. Somebody came into this room—somebody with a
key to the front door-and there was a quarrel. Call it the
redhead if you like. Anyhow there was a fight, and you get
slammed into the face. What's George's club?”
"He isn't there.”
"How do you know?”
“I called it. He hasn't been there."
“Then it was George, after all,” said Andy. "I've seen the
big brute, and if he thinks he can get away with this he can
think again. Over and over, in fact. What's Garrett's number?”
"What do you want it for?” Her voice had changed. It was
no longer shrewish. Rather it was the voice of a scared little
girl.
“Because your George is going to need a lawyer soon,” said
Andy pleasantly. “And maybe a doctor, if I can locate him.”
He sat down by the telephone, got the number and dialed it,
to be answered by an infuriated voice.
“Hello! What the hell is it now?"
Andy smirked.


ONE NIGHT IN SPRING
119
“This is the East Sixty-eighth Street Police Station,” he said.
“There has been an attack on Mrs. George Lansdale, and we
would like to locate her husband.”
“Nonsense! She was just talking to me.”
"Maybe she didn't care to mention it, Mr. Garrett. It's a fact,
just the same. You can call her doctor if you like. It looks as
though there might have been a family quarrel, and her hus-
band”
“Good God! George Lansdale never struck a woman in his
life.”
“We understand that,” said Andy, in his best imitation of
the official police voice. "Still, we'd like to locate him. His wife
seems to think you know where he is.”
There was a silence. Mr. Garrett was obviously thinking.
"If necessary,” he said at last, “I can provide Mr. Lansdale
with an alibi for tonight. You understand, I don't want to do
so unless it's important. It's a private matter, a—"
“I get you,” said Andy. “We can verify it ourselves. It will
be kept entirely confidential.”
Mr. Garrett was not happy. There was another silence. Then
he said.
“All right. He's at the Morland Hotel on the West Side. I
forget the street. He'll explain when you see him. And I'd like
to say this: If somebody knocked some sense into Lida Lans-
dale's silly head tonight, it's a damned good thing."
He put down the telephone and grinned at the girl in the
bed.
"I don't think Archie likes you very much,” he said con-
versationally. “He intimated that he was sorry the damage
was slight.”
“Where is he?”
"Archie? He's probably back in a warm bed by now. He"
"Where is George?"
V


120
FAMILIAR FACES
“You heard me. It's confidential. But he says he has an alibi,
if that helps any."
“I've told you all along that it wasn't George."
She began to cry again. Tears streamed down her face and
around her swollen nose. Her face was puckered, and to Andy
she looked once again like the pictures of the funny kid who
had made a shy debut at Sherry's and looked as though she
hated it. He felt guilty and uncomfortable.
“Now, listen, sister,” he said. “Why don't you tell papa and
get it over? I can't start out after George without some of the
facts. Was there a redhead, and if so, why?"
"I don't know," she sobbed. “She just came in and gave me
the devil. She said I didn't deserve a decent husband. She said
it was time I grew up and knew what things were all about.
Then she called me a little fool and I said she was a hussy.
That was when she threw the box at me.”
“I see,” said Andy. “Pretty. Very pretty. Life in café society,
I presume.”
He eyed her reflectively, and got up.
“I think I'll mosey across town and have a little chat with
George. Maybe he knows a redhead. Maybe he gave her his
keys so she could get in here and tell you you've been a brat.
She had to have a key, didn't she?”
She sat up in bed again. Her small young breasts were out-
lined by her thin nightdress, and Andy looked away.
“See here,” she said. "I'm going with you. I've got to see him.
I want to talk to him.”
She showed every evidence of getting out of the bed at
once, and Andy looked alarmed. He backed toward the door.
“Stay right where you are,” he said. “This is my job. I'm on
my way now."
"You'll bring him back?”
"If he wants to come,” he said. “He may not. From what


122
FAMILIAR FACES
somewhere. His wife's out now looking for it, and if you ever
saw a redheaded woman in a temper you'll know what I
mean."
Andy had started to light a cigarette. He put out the match
and reaching into his pocket pulled out a five-dollar bill, which
left him exactly two dollars. He laid the bill on the desk and
looked at the clerk.
“What's the chance of speaking to A. Brown while his wife's
not there?”
The clerk eyed the bill.
“I'll see what he says,” he said, and went to the telephone
switchboard. But repeated efforts elicited no response from A.
Brown. He glanced at Andy.
“Don't answer. Maybe he's out after the dog too."
“What's the matter with my going up and looking over the
room? He may be there, asleep."
The clerk shook his head. He picked up the bill and sadly
held it out.
“I need this job, son,” he said simply. “But I can't leave the
desk and go, and I can't let you up alone.”
Andy saw it was final. He took the bill and turned to go
out, to hear a chuckle behind him. He turned. The clerk was
grinning again.
"Got air conditioning, I see.”
Andy clutched at his rear.
“Look,” he said earnestly. “I'm paying fifty cents for a safety
pin. A dollar for two."
But the clerk only chuckled.
"Haven't seen one since I was a baby," he observed. “What's
wrong? You been after a dog too?"
Andy went out, slamming the door behind him. He got into
Tillie and sat there, morose and soured on his world. The
leather seat was cold beneath him, but he ignored it. Certainly
pin. Alok," he bed at hings I see »


124
FAMILIAR FACES
had he had brought George Lansdale's hairbrushes with him.
The monogram was clearly and impressively G.S.L.
Andy was bewildered. What was George Lansdale doing
here? What about the dog? Did a man take a dog for a walk
after he had banged his wife on the head and was hiding out,
on the advice of a lawyer, in a hole like this? There was the
redheaded woman too. Who was she and where was she?
He began to inspect the room, looking more like an excited
young terrier than ever. As a result he gathered certain surpris-
ing facts, as follows:
(1) The recent George Lansdale had disappeared wearing
pajamas and possibly a dressing gown, either or both over his
underwear.
(2) Worn his shoes, socks and garters.
(3) Left a gold cigarette case in the pocket of his coat. Also
a wallet containing five hundred dollars in Mr. Roosevelt's cur-
rency.
(4) Lost a dog. No dog in sight. And
(5) Found a redheaded Mrs. A. Brown, also not in sight
and apparently highly temperamental.
Andy felt slightly dizzy. The vision of George Lansdale,
owner of the big house uptown, member of the best clubs and
Y'21 in the Social Register, wandering the streets in his night
garments and whistling for some Fido or other was overwhelm-
ing. In other words, it was queer as all hell, and after some hesi-
tation he picked up the telephone and called Lida Lansdale.
Her voice was quivering with excitement when she answered,
but it became flat when she recognized Andy's.
"Oh,” she said. “It's you, is it?"
“Yes,” said Andy. “I've found George, or at least—"
“Where is he? I want to talk to him.”
"He's got a room here at the Morland Hotel, on the West
Side. But he isn't here. He's disappeared.”


ONE NIGHT IN SPRING
125
“What do you mean, disappeared ?"
“Gone. Vamoosed. Look in the dictionary. He's gone, but
he's left his clothes and quite a lot of money. The way things
appear here he's out somewhere in his pajamas, looking for
a dog."
"A dog!” said Lida. “We haven't got a dog."
“Well, he's got one tonight, unless he's in the habit of lying
on the floor and drinking out of a soap dish. Or gnawing a
chop bone to the core, whatever that may be.”
There was a moment's silence. Lida apparently did not find
the situation amusing. It was in her little-girl voice that she
spoke again.
“Was-was he alone?” she asked. “I mean-well, you know
what I mean.”
"Absolutely. No softening feminine touches. Not a doily.
Not a—"
“Listen,” said Lida, with a slight tinge of desperation in her
voice. “When he comes back tell him something for me. Tell
him I've changed my mind. Tell him I'm sorry. Please, Andy.
I want him to come home.”
A faint light began to a dawn in Andy's mind. He was smil-
ing as he put down the telephone. But his personal condition
was not too good. He tried to examine it in the mirror, but
this proving unsuccessful he stepped into the bathroom and
removed his trousers. He was looking at them hopelessly when
a sound made him glance up.
A girl with red hair was staring fixedly at him from the
room. She had on a hat and coat, and under normal circum-
stances she would have been pretty. Just now, however, her
face was contorted with indignation.
"Just what do you think you are doing in there?" she asked
coldly.
Andy blushed.


126
FAMILIAR FACES
“It-well, it's pretty obvious, isn't it?” he inquired. “I've met
with a slight accident and—”.
“Are you getting out or not?"
"Give me a minute, sister. I've got to get these on.”
"I'm not looking,” she said, still coldly. “I'm merely calling
the night clerk."
“Hi!” said Andy desperately. “Don't do that. I can explain.
I_”
But her only answer was to bang the bathroom door. A
moment later Andy, jerking on his trousers, heard her at the
telephone and groaned. When he finally emerged she con-
fronted him, a blazing picture of indignation.
"You oughtn't to have done that,” he said. “What did you
tell him?"
“That there was a burglar in my room.”
Andy was stunned.
"That's torn it,” he said. “Look here, quick, before he gets
here. Where's George Lansdale? Don't tell me you've killed
him and he's under the bed. I've looked.”
She sat down suddenly, looking faint and frightened.
"I don't know," she said hopelessly. “I've been looking for
him for hours.”
Then he heard it. From not far away came the wail of a
patrol car siren. It grew louder and louder until it sounded as
though all the devils of hell had been let loose. Then abruptly
it stopped, and Andy, throwing up the window, saw a couple
of uniformed figures running across the pavement and enter-
ing the hotel below.
He turned to the girl.
"It's the police,” he said. “We've got to get the hell out of
here.”
“The police!" She looked stricken. “I've got to go too. I
can't be found here. And the service door is locked.”


ONE NIGHT IN SPRING
127.
"Fire escape,” said Andy briefly. “End of hall. Run. I'm
coming. Car's below in the alley."
As she left he began to scoop up the possessions of the recent
George Lansdale. He did it with swiftness and accuracy, from
the hairbrushes to the clothing, and he beat the slow elevator
by about ten seconds. The girl was going down the fire escape
as neatly as a cat. Andy, however, was heavily encumbered.
As a matter of fact, he slid the last few steps, with considerable
damage to himself. But he reached Tillie in time, threw in his
impedimenta and crawled into the driver's seat.
“Heaven help me,” he gasped, “if the police get me now!"
It was a near thing. Someone shouted from the window
overhead, and an officer came loping around the corner of the
alley. But Tillie was already on the move. She leaped past him
gallantly, turned the corner on two wheels, and was on her
way. By the time the police car started she was headed toward
the park. It was not until Andy had removed a barrier to a
closed road, driven through and replaced it, that he breathed
normally again. He went around a curve, stopped the car and
with shaking hands lit a cigarette.
"All right now, sister," he said. “Let's hear about it. What's
the story?”
“You wouldn't believe me if I told y
"After tonight I'd believe anything.”
She remained stubbornly silent, however. Andy belatedly
offered her a cigarette, but she refused it with a gesture.
"Well, see here,” he said reasonably. “If you're fond or
Lansdale”
“I'm not fond of him.”
“That won't wash, sister. You're fond enough of him to bash
his wife in the face with a cigarette box, aren't you? I suppose
you know the police are looking for you for that little job."
She shivered.
1011


ONE NIGHT IN SPRING
129
She did not answer at once. Andy sneaked a glance at her.
All he saw was a nice profile, with the type of short nose he
liked on a girl, and that her hands were clenched in her lap.
"I'll tell you why I went,” she said finally. “I didn't believe
she wanted a divorce. Not really. I thought that if I told her
about things she'd understand. All she seemed to think about
was going somewhere. She could sleep all day, but he couldn't.
Then a few days ago she told him she wanted a divorce. Him
worrying about business, and then going home to that! He
looked sick the day she told him, and he hasn't been the same
since.”
“These big guys are pretty soft about women,” said Andy.
“Fond of him yourself, aren't you?”
"I'm not in love with him. I'm sorry for him. When I saw
him in that awful room—” She looked at Andy defiantly.
"Anyhow, he said he'd expected to pay the woman a hundred
dollars—that was her regular charge—and I can use a hundred
dollars. Who can't?"
“Sure," said Andy soothingly. “I know. Who better? Then
what? What happened to him? Where is he?"
"I've told you. I don't know. And Tommy's gone too."
“Tommy's the dog?”
“Yes. He's a Scotty.”
“Well, look at it. Tommy probably ran off. They do some-
times in the spring,” he added delicately. “George follows him
and gets lost. Or maybe the police picked him up. Running
around the streets without his clothes, you know. After all, a
good warm station house isn't to be sneezed at. No pun in-
tended.”
All at once she began to cry. Andy put his arm around her
and drew her head down on his shoulder. She felt young and
yielding, and not at all like a girl who threw cigarette boxes
around and got the police after her. He felt strong and pro-


130
FAMILIAR FACES
tective. But suddenly his spine crawled. A park policeman with
a flashlight was standing beside the car.
“None of that in this park,” he said gruffly.
Andy's heart, already beyond its normal rate, began to beat
two hundred a minute. The girl jerked upright.
"It's all right, officer,” he said. “This lady is in trouble. Just
lost someone she's fond of. I want to get her quiet before I take
her home.”
The officer grunted, and turned the light on Tillie's rear seat.
“What's all this?” he said suspiciously.
But Andy had had enough. He had had plenty. His reply
was to step hard on the gas, and Tillie shot forward as if she
knew an emergency when she saw it. Andy's voice sounded
shaken when he was able to speak again.
"If I'd been caught with those clothes,” he said. “That hotel
clerk could identify me, you know. And you'd told him I was
a burglar.”
She had dried her eyes. And some of her old spirit was
coming back.
"I can't imagine why you brought them,” she said.
"Can't you? With Lansdale's name and monogram all over
the place? But I'm going to say this, Mrs. A. Brown—"
"Price is my name.”
"All right. What I want to say is this: I'm pretty well fed
up with George Lansdale. I don't know how you feel, but per-
sonally I don't care if I never see George again. Or hear of him.
Besides, I think I need some iodine. I slid down part of that fire
escape.”
All at once the girl laughed. It was a nice laugh. It showed
what she could do when she hadn't lost an employer and a
dog, and was not being hunted by the police for committing
assault on the person and possibly burglary. In fact, she laughed
until Andy became alarmed.
ond
was


ONE NIGHT IN SPRING
133
A big young man in a dressing gown was poised heavily
on the top of the fence. As they looked he dropped down,
there was the sound of rending cloth, a crash that sounded like
an explosion, and almost immediately Bert leaped neatly over
the fence and grabbed him.
“Got you this time,” he said, breathing hard.
The young man looked dazed.
"Let go of me, you fool,” he said. “This is my house."
“Funny way you have of getting in,” said Bert cheerfully.
The young man jerked himself loose, brought up a fist
which had remembered something from Y '21 and caught
him on the point of the chin. Bert went down and stayed down.
Andy watched with unholy glee.
"I gather," he said, “that George has come home again."
George had indeed come home. He did not see them as he
stabbed in the darkness through the kitchen. He moved like a
man with deadly purpose, into the front hall, now brightly lit.
He was incredibly dirty, and his silk dressing gown hung in
tatters about him. Nevertheless, he was impressive. In fact, he
was formidable.
He did not look at his wife, who was standing with Alex
in the front hall. He marched up to Alex grimly.
“You'll find your partner in the back yard,” he said. “Get
him out of there."
"George!" said Lida. “George darling!”
He ignored her. He shoved Alex out the door with a large
flat hand, and slammed the door behind him. And he did a
thing which he had not learned at Y '21, or at the best clubs.
He reached out, caught his wife by the shoulders, and shook
her until her teeth rattled. After which he released her and
started up the stairs. She looked after him, too astounded at
first for speech.
"How dare you do that to me?” she said furiously.


134
FAMILIAR FACES
He stopped and stared coldly down at her.
“Because I'm through,” he said. “Go to Reno and get your
divorce. You can charge physical cruelty. I've just done it,
haven't I? You've had it coming to you for a long time.”
"You never told me anything. If that redheaded girl hadn't
tried to kill me tonight—"
George looked startled.
“What redheaded girl?”
“I don't know. She threw a cigarette box at me, George. I
had to have the doctor.”
“Good God!” said George, and took a step or two down the
stairs.
"She came here and said I'd been a rotten wife," said Lida,
in her little girl voice. “I have too, George. Then when I came
down here and saw a policeman and your clothes I thought
you'd been killed. I've been so scared, darling.”
She burst into tears, and Andy had a final glimpse of George's
arms around her before he closed the door.
"Final clinch and curtain," he said dreamily. “She's a good
kid, after all. Now let's get out of here."
Some time later he stopped Tillie in front of an apartment
house well downtown. He got out and helped Miss Price to
the pavement, and in the faint gray of the spring dawn she
looked at him and smiled. He was not at his best, all things
considered; but his engaging grin was back where it belonged,
which was, naturally, on his face.
"Some night, eh?” he said. “Seems funny. Four hours ago we
hadn't even met.”
“Yes, it does seem queer," said Miss Price
"Maybe I'll see you again sometime. How about tomorrow?"
“Aren't you afraid I'll throw something at you?"
“George Lansdale isn't the only man who's learned how to
manage a woman tonight.”


ONE NIGHT IN SPRING
135
She laughed. Then she reached into her bag and fumbled
there.
“I've got something here you may need,” she said.
She held out a safety pin, and Andy took it, looking sheepish.
“So you've been holding out on me,” he said reproachfully.
"You said a nice girl wouldn't have noticed.”
He tore himself away finally. He needed another pair of
pants, he needed a shave, and most of all he needed some
iodine. But he was whistling cheerfully as he got into Tillie
and started off. At the corner, however, he slowed up. A small
Scotch terrier was moving with some embarrassment toward
the apartment house. His head and tail both drooped, but
there was something of the conqueror about him too. Andy
stopped the car and watch him mount the steps.
“By Jove!” he thought. “It is spring. I'd clean forgotten.”
There was a rapt look in his face as he turned Tillie uptown.





VI
The Door That Would Not Stay Closed





T first it happened only when Louise was alone in
the house. When Roy was at the office and Mabel,
C T the maid, was out for her afternoon off or chatting
with some delivery boy on the back porch. Louise had not no
ticed it much then. All she had realized was that, however
firmly she closed the door into Mrs. Allison's room, she would
sooner or later find it open.
One night she spoke to Roy about it.
“I wish you'd look at the door into your mother's room," she
said. She was always a little frightened to mention his mother
to Roy. His face had a way of tightening as though she had
intruded into some place where she did not belong.
"What's the matter with the door ?” he asked shortly.
"It won't stay closed.”
"That's silly. What's happened to it?”.
“I don't know,” she said. “It isn't all the time. Just now and
then.”
“Every door does that.”
He went on with his dinner, or rather he pretended to go
on with it. But Louise, watching him, knew that it was only a
pretense. He had been eating badly ever since his mother's death.
Not that he was grieving. He had, as a matter of fact, taken it
rather calmly. But after a few weeks she had noticed the change
in him. Now looking at him across the table he seemed thin
and taut, she thought. The boyishness had gone out of his face,
and there were times when he seemed as remote from her as
though he had never loved and married her.
"I wish you wouldn't imagine things," he said irritably. “If
139


140
FAMILIAR FACES
it won't stay closed, lock it. That's simple. Provided,” he added,
"you don't want to look at the room.”
“Why should I want to look at it?” She felt helpless rather
than angry. “I looked at it for ten years."
He put down his fork and stared at her.
“So that's it. Because Mother lived here for ten years you
resent the room she lived in. You want to forget her. You want
to shut off her room, as if it wasn't there. Any psychiatrist
would know what's wrong with you.”
"That's not true," she said, as steadily as she could. “I was
good to her. You know that. Only—why did she do it, Roy?”
“Do what?”
"Stay there,” she said desperately. "For ten years, from the
day I came here. She never left it. She could walk. I could hear
her at night, after you were asleep. She would walk around.
She_”
He flung his napkin down and got up.
“I think you're crazy,” he said. “She was a sick woman. She
had a bad heart, and she died of it. Now you sit there and tell
me she was all right. My own mother!”
She sat very still after he had gone. It was useless, of course.
Why bring up now what was long over? Why tell him of the
ten years' hatred which had radiated from that room? The
bitter woman in the bed, eying her with dislike as she came
and went, and listening, always listening, keeping her door
open so nothing of the life of the house would escape her. The
enforced quiet of the days. Her friends, aware of that open
door, coming in on tiptoe, their voices hushed.
“How is she today, Lou?”
“Just about the same.”
And after a year or two, nobody coming in.
She had not minded that so much. She still had Roy. But
even her relations with him began to have something of the


DOOR WOULD NOT STAY CLOSED 141
clandestine about them, as if their passion was somehow sinful.
It was as though there was a listening ear all over the house.
Even Mabel had felt it.
"Gives me the creeps, it does,” Louise had heard her say to
the laundress one day. “Just lying there and listening. And the
way she hates the missus! If looks could kill there'd be a
murder, sure.”
She sat alone at the table, remembering that. It was true, of
course. Her mother-in-law had hated her, with the bitter jeal-
ousy of an old woman for a young and attractive one. Hated
her because Roy loved her. Hated her from the day when,
coming back from her honeymoon, Roy had carried her over
the threshold while old George, the butler, had opened the
door. She had been radiant that day with happiness. They were
both laughing, and she had scolded Roy for crushing the
gardenias she was wearing. Then he put her down, and Mrs.
Allison had been waiting in the hall.
She was smiling. Louise never forgot that smile.
“Welcome home, children,” she said. “You don't mind being
called a child, do you, Louise? You both seem so very young
to me.”
She was a small pretty woman. Louise had never realized
before how small she was. And she was exquisitely dressed.
Louise, tired from a long train ride, had felt dirty and clumsy
beside her. She had worn a trailing house gown of soft pale-
blue crepe, and she had looked like a French marchioness.
“Come in,” she said, opening the drawing-room door. “I
have tea for you.”
Roy had grinned.
“I think Lou would rather have a highball,” he said.
"Really!”
That was all.
The tea had been dreadful. Mrs. Allison had been most pleas-


142
FAMILIAR FACES
ant. She was, she said, an old woman now. Of course she had
not lost a son. She had gained a daughter. But naturally she
expected to resign as chatelaine, if Louise knew what she meant.
The house was hers from now on.
Roy had looked surprised.
“But see here, mother,” he said. “Why can't things go on as
they have? After all, Lou's pretty young to run a house."
And Mrs. Allison had smiled at him.
“Nothing can go on as it was, darling,” she said. “You have
a wife now."
There had been a long and formal dinner, she remembered.
George had served majestically, and it came on, course after
course, until she wanted to scream. Mrs. Allison had insisted
that Louise take her place at the table, and so they sat, the two
of them, the length of the table and Mrs. Allison-between
them. Roy had thought it rather fine.
“You're a grand old sport, mother," he said, and going
around, had kissed her.
That had been his attitude for ten years. Coming home in the
evening, taking the stairs two at a time, to stand in her door-
way, smiling.
“How's the old sport today?” he would say. “Looking beau-
tiful as usual.”
Well, Louise had to give her that. Mrs. Allison had remained
exquisite to the end. When business went from bad to worse
and the staff had been reduced to Mabel-and Louise, of course
-she was still exquisite. She lay in her bed in her delicate night-
gowns, surrounded by the innumerable lace pillows which
Louise washed and kept fresh, and the whole room smelled of
the fresh flowers Roy kept there, and of expensive perfume.
Roy, going back to the workaday world from a Louise with
roughened hands and tired feet, would carry that picture with
him.


DOOR WOULD NOT STAY CLOSED 143
“Wonderful, isn't she? All that pain and everything, and—”
“What pain?” Louise said one day, goaded beyond endurance.
Roy stared at her.
"That's a fine remark to make,” he said.
“I suppose I'm tired,” Louise had said dully. “I'm sorry, Roy."
She never intimated again what she felt, that her mother-in-
law was holding Roy by a deliberate make-believe. It had
marked a change in their relations, however. She thought he
spent more time after that in his mother's room. As though to
make up, perhaps, for some lack of understanding in Louise.
But their relations had changed long before that. On the first
night they had spent in the house, as a matter of fact.
Mrs. Allison had been very pleasant all evening. She had
shown Louise the house, the big tiled kitchen where Bertha
the cook presided over a stove large enough for a hotel. The
kitchenmaid. The brass pots and pans hung like a frieze
around the walls. The way the day's menu was placed in a
frame on a door. The butler's pantry, with the silver service
on velvet-lined shelves. The linen room, with lavender bags
among the sheets. The guest rooms, immaculate from the fires
ready to light to the desks fitted with paper and ink and pens.
"I always leave two kinds of pens,” Mrs. Allison explained.
“Some people like stubs, of course. And others— There are
laundry lists too. They are in a drawer.”
What with the train trip and the heavy dinner, Louise had
been already exhausted. Now she felt dizzy.
"I do hope you will continue to run the house,” she had
stammered. “I—I never could do it like this.”
But Mrs. Allison only smiled, as she had smiled when Roy
carried Louise through the door.
"I have always said that when my son married I would step
down and out,” she said. “Roy knew that perfectly well."
That night she had the heart attack. Louise and Roy had


144
FAMILIAR FACES
gone up to their room at last, and for the first time since their
arrival Roy had taken her into his arms and held her there.
“My darling,” he said. “Darling. My beautiful darling. In my
home at last. Just you and I.”
She had started to undress. She still felt a little shy, taking
off her clothes before him. He was sitting on the side of the
bed laughing at her when they heard the crash. When he
opened the door Mrs. Allison was just outside it, flat on the
floor and unconscious.
That was Louise's first night in her new home. She thought
sometimes that all the others had been like it. ..
Roy had been frantic. He picked up his mother and carried
her to her bed. Then he began shouting, for servants, for doc-
tors and nurses. When Louise got in his way he pushed her
aside as though he had never seen her before. After a few hours,
with the house jammed with people, she went down and sat
alone in the huge drawing room. It was cold, and she shivered.
She shivered now as she sat at the table. It was Mabel's night
out, and she had the table to clear and the dishes to wash. But
she sat on. Maybe Roy was right and she was crazy. Ten years
of that big house, with the money gone. Ten years of nursing
a woman who hated her because she had married her son. Ten
years of trying to make Roy happy, and now, when escape had
seemed to come
She got up. Roy was coming down the stairs.
“Now see here," he said. “That door's all right. I've just
closed it, and it stayed closed.”
“Was it open?”
"It was. Why not?”
“Because I closed it before I came down.”
He looked at her. Then he turned abruptly.
“I'm going to take a walk,” he said. “I've got a job to keep,
and somebody has to be sane in this house."
She heard him slam out the front door. Her arms were full


DOOR WOULD NOT STAY CLOSED 145
of dishes, but she put them down. For a moment she stood
irresolute in the lower hall. Then slowly she mounted the stairs.
The door was standing open.
She felt a little faint, but she did not run away. She went
to it and stood there, looking into the darkened empty room
beyond.
"Listen,” she said. “What good does this do you? You held
him for a long time. Even after he married me you still had
him. Don't think I didn't know. I did. Can't you let him go
now? He doesn't even believe you are here. I don't ask this
for myself, but won't you let him be happy?”
She stood very still, listening. She had heard that when things
like this happened there were knocks on the furniture or even
small lights. Like stars. She had never believed in such things,
but if they existed
Nothing happened. All at once she felt childish and silly.
Maybe she was off balance. She had brooded so long that she
wasn't sure of anything any more. She closed the door and
went downstairs, and when Roy came back she was in the
kitchen, finishing her work.
The walk had done him good. He looked better. He had
lost the tightness from his face. He came over and put his arms
around her.
"Sorry, old girl,” he said. “We're both nervous, I guess.
Let's forget that damned door and all the rest of it. How about
a movie?”
She went, of course. They had had to give up the car, and
her feet felt as though they were made of lead as they walked
the few necessary blocks. But it was Roy who slept through the
picture, and she saw again how much he had changed in the
past few weeks. This sleeping, for instance. Like an exhausted
man. Like a man whose vitality was slowly ebbing. Like a-
she suddenly realized it-like a sick man. She felt a sharp
terror. If that was it-


146
FAMILIAR FACES
She had to rouse him when the picture was over. He looked
sheepish.
"Like a kid!” he said. “Don't know when I've done
that.”
The door was open again when they went upstairs that night.
Roy looked at it and laughed.
“Well, what do you make of that!” he said. “I swear I closed
it. Maybe vibration does it. A truck or something. My apologies,
darling. That damned door does open.”
He closed it. It creaked as he did it, and he said it needed oil.
But he was quite cheery about it. The sleep had rested him.
When Louise crawled into her bed he leaned down and kissed
her.
“I'm cold,” he said. “Move over, darling. I'm coming in with
you.”
She moved over, and he kissed her again.
"You've been a grand sport, darling,” he said, “and I'm crazy
about you."
He put out the light. Then she heard the door creak across
the hall, and she sat up in the bed, her eyes wild.
"No," she said. “No, Roy. Please.”
He stood beside her bed, astounded.
“What's happened to you? Why on earth can't I get into
your bed?”
“That door's open again.”
“What the hell has that got to do with you and me?"
"She's here,” she said hysterically. "You think she's gone,
but she's not, Roy. She's in this house. She never left it."
He stood staring down at her.
“Now I know you are crazy,” he said, and went across the
hall to his mother's room.
She did not sleep at all that night. The door across the hall
remained closed. After a time the light went out. Sometime
about midnight she heard Mabel come in, making her cautious


DOOR WOULD NOT STAY CLOSED 147
way up the back staircase to bed. Between three and four the
milkman came, his horse's feet making slow muffled thuds on
the cement of the street. She heard the sound of the bottles as
they were set down. Then the horse moved on.
She lay still, thinking. She felt rational, but then didn't all
mad people feel rational? And the door was a fact. She would
close it and it would open. It wasn't a matter of imagination.
Maybe only her interpretation of it was wrong. Just a month
ago they had carried her mother-in-law out of that room across.
There had been a funeral, with flowers all over the place. Then
she and Roy, Roy holding her arm-to steady himself more
than her-had seen her slowly lowered into her grave.
That was fact too. They had come home, and Mabel had
opened the windows all over the house, and made up the bed in
the room across. It had seemed strange when she went in. No
lace pillows, no silk blanket covers, no piles of books and maga-
zines, no flowers. She had closed the door on it, on everything
it had stood for for the last ten years; the slow alienation of
Roy, the listening and spying, the hatred and jealousy which
had emanated from it like an actual force.
She had closed the door, and three hours later she had found
it open again.
So she lay in her bed that night, remembering. The house
was very quiet. The door across the hall remained closed, as
though with Roy within the room peace had descended on the
house.
Roy was coughing the next morning when he came down to
breakfast, but he said nothing about it. He was not angry, how-
ever. Instead, he stopped by her chair and put a hand on her
shoulder.
“We've got to look into this trouble of yours," he said, when
Mabel was out of the room. “I suppose it wasn't easy, although
Mother did her best. Still it was a long strain.”
“You've taken cold, Roy."


148
FAMILIAR FACES
He smiled like his old self.
"What's a fellow to do when his wife throws him out? Don't
bother about me. Would you like to go away for a while? Not
brilliant, perhaps, but it's the best I can think up on short
notice.”
"I'm not going while you have that cold.” She hesitated.
“Roy, I spent last night thinking things over. Am I really losing
my mind?”
"Don't be an idiot. I didn't mean that. I was excited. That
damned door does open. I'll get a carpenter here today.”
"You still think it's just the door?”
"Listen, darling," he said soberly. “There may be another
life. I hope there is. But when I pass into it I don't expect to
come back and open doors. I don't expect to come back at all,
but if I do I hope I'll be here for some good purpose.”
She knew she ought to keep quiet, to let it go at that. She
broke a piece of toast with unsteady fingers.
“But do we change so much,” she said. “I mean, the mere
fact of death ”
"I don't want to talk about it, Lou. One thing I can do. I'll
get that door fixed today, and you might think of a holiday
somewhere. You need it."
He was coughing again as he went out the door. She listened
with a sort of despair. Suppose that last night, out of sheer
hysteria, she had sent him to his death. He had said he was
cold, and she had sent him to that unheated room. She was
filled with terror.
She went about her work mechanically that morning. At
eleven o'clock a workman appeared, and there was the noise
through the house of a plane working on the door as it lay, off
its hinges, on the floor. Mabel was avid with interest.
"I'm glad you're fixing it,” she said. “It's scared the daylights
out of me lately. I've stood by and seen it open itself, for all the
world as if she was behind it.”


DOOR WOULD NOT STAY CLOSED 149
Louise saw Mabel's bright eyes on her, and managed to smile.
“It was uncanny,” she said. “It will be all right now.”
She felt vaguely comforted, however. She and Mabel had
both seen it. It was no longer her own problem. She would tell
Roy that, now that it was all over. When she paid the carpenter
as he left she felt an enormous sense of relief.
“You'll have no more trouble, lady,” he said. “Doors is queer
sometimes. They warp or get out of balance. Mostly they stick,
but sometimes it's the other way.”
"It's all right now?" she asked.
"Sure. You go up and see. Closed as tight as my old woman's
pocketbook!"
He laughed heartily at this, and after he had gone she sur-
veyed herself in the hall mirror. What she saw alarmed her.
The sheen had gone from her hair, her eyes looked tired and
lifeless. Perhaps if she had a shampoo and a facial-
She told Mabel before she went upstairs to dress, and Mabel
had nodded understandingly.
"It's about time you took some care of yourself,” she said.
"She did, up to the very end."
She felt a new sense of closeness to Mabel. They had been
through ten years of hell together. They had been two slaves of
an insistent bell. Together they had climbed stairs, carried trays,
cooked, washed and ironed the small delicate things they could
not have themselves. And for ten years they had feared the
small bundle of hatred who was Roy's mother.
She reached out and took one of Mabel's roughened hands.
“What would I have done without you?" she said.
Mabel looked self-conscious.
“Well, it's over, ma'am.”
"Yes, it's over, Mabel.”
She went up the stairs, a song in her heart. It was over. It
was over. It was over.
But it was not over. The door was standing open again.


150
FAMILIAR FACES
Two hours later she was sitting in a quiet room downtown.
Except for a desk it did not look like an office, and the quiet-
faced man across from her was making no notes.
"I see,” he said. “Now about this door. Since when have you
noticed it?"
“I came back from the funeral,” she said carefully. “I went
into the room and closed the window. Mabel, the maid, had
put everything in order. When I went out I closed the door. I
know I did it because"-she flushed—“because I turned and
tried the knob.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Because I wanted it shut. I never wanted to see the room
again. I had had years of it. It was painful. It was something I
wanted to forget.”
“And then ?
“Three hours later it was standing wide open.”
“Why did you want to forget it? Just because Mrs. Allison
had been ill for so long? Because she had given, I gather, a
good bit of trouble?”
She hesitated.
“That was part of it, I suppose,” she said honestly. “You can
see how it was. Our youth going by—I'm nearly thirty-and no
life for either of us, Roy or myself. Not even any children. The
depression, you know, and always doctor bills and nurses and
things like that.”
“I see. That was part of it. What was the other part?”
She looked up defiantly.
“She was always jealous of me. About Roy, I mean. The first
night, when we came home from our honeymoon, she had a
heart attack in the hall. Outside our door.”
“Was it a real attack?"
"I don't know. I never have known. Nobody can see a pain,
can they?”


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FAMILIAR FACES
locked up, but there are a good many things we don't under-
stand in this world, and perhaps in the next. Some very domi-
nant people leave behind them an impression so strong that
it seems as though they themselves exist. Then again you were
very jealous of your mother-in-law. That may take some get-
ting over. I don't suppose,” he added dryly, “that by any chance
you helped her out of the world?”.
"No." She looked surprised. “I never thought of it. Perhaps
if I had—”.
He smiled.
“I didn't suppose so. What are the chances of your getting
out of the house? Maybe a small apartment somewhere?”
"Roy wouldn't leave. He was born there.”
"Perhaps I'd better talk to Mr. Allison.” He got up, and
stood looking down at her. “There are one or two things I
want you to remember. First, there is nothing wrong with you
that a rest and a new environment will not cure. In the mean-
time put a padlock on that door, and get some sleep. That's
what you need. Not a padded cell.”
She bought the padlock on her way home, and she and
Mabel put it on the door before Roy came back. But Roy did
not notice it. His cold was worse. He only laughed it off, how-
ever.
“Don't worry about me,” he said. “There's a bug all over
town. Maybe I'll stay home from the office tomorrow, but
that's all."
She did not sleep again that night. The door remained closed,
but the sense of someone in the room was very strong. So strong
that once, when Roy coughed in a troubled sleep, she spoke
aloud in the darkness.
"You can't do this to him," she said. "You can't take him.
He's mine, not yours. He has a right to his life. He's still young.
Why can't you let go?”
IS


DOOR WOULD NOT STAY CLOSED 153
She got up after that and put a hand on Roy's forehead.
It was burning hot, and she was possessed by a sudden frenzy.
It had become a battle between the dead woman and herself,
a struggle between good and evil, between life and death. She
stood in the center of the room and defied the darkness around
her.
"He is not going to die,” she said. “He is going to live. Do
you hear that? Live. Live on and on. If you really loved him
you would want him to. But you didn't. Not really. He only fed
your pride."
The next morning she called the doctor.
Roy had pneumonia. They took him in an ambulance to the
hospital, and Mabel helped her pack his bag; a red-eyed Mabel,
folding pajamas, who paused once to look at Louise, who was
hastily dressing.
“I'll bet she'll be sore,” she said. “She can't follow him there,
can she?"
Louise was combing her hair. She stopped, the comb in the
air.
“That's a strange thing to say, Mabel.”
Mabel Aushed.
"Well, maybe it is and maybe it isn't,” she said stubbornly.
"I always said she'd never leave him behind with you if she
could help it.”
There were some bad days after that. Roy lay in an oxygen
tent in the hospital. He looked very strange, his big body
shrunken so that the bedclothes were almost flat over him.
Louise had a room there too, but she did not use it. Instead, she
stayed in Roy's room in a corner. Sometimes she slept in her
chair, but mostly she was awake. It was as though when she
was awake she was protecting him from something. She would
drop off into a doze and then waken suddenly, searching the
room with her eyes. The nurses watched her.


154
FAMILIAR FACES
“She's going to fall down and go bump someday,” they said.
“Do you notice? She's afraid to sleep."
Once the night nurse, coming in unexpectedly, found her
talking to Roy, who could not possibly hear her. She was lean-
ing over the bed.
“You'll have to forget her, darling,” she was saying. “She
doesn't need you now. I do.”
The night nurse took her by the arm.
"Listen, Mrs. Allison,” she said. “You go to bed and get a
nice little sleep. I'll call you if there's any change.”
But she did not go. She went back to her corner and watched
the room, particularly the dark corners.
On the worst night of all, however, she was not there. No one
saw her go. One minute she was there, in her chair as usual.
The next she was gone, walking like a sleepwalker through the
long hospital corridors; a young woman with what had once
been beauty, holding her head high with a sort of defiance, but
seeing nobody. Yet her movements, had anyone been watch-
ing, were purposeful in the extreme.
She did not take a taxicab. She walked, choosing dark quiet
streets, and at last she stopped before a large house, rather
out of repair but still imposing. It stood alone in neglected
grounds, and after a look to see that she was unobserved she
took out a key and went in.
She did not turn on any lights. After all, why should she?
She knew it better than she knew her own face; every step of
the weary stairs, every corner which had had to be dusted,
every door and window. In the dark she made her way up the
back staircase to Mabel's room. She had sent Mabel away, but
she had to be sure. And it was when she reached the second
floor again that she stopped and stared. The empty hallway,
dimly lit by a street lamp, stretched in front of her, and the
closed door was standing open.
.


DOOR WOULD NOT STAY CLOSED 155
Now again she had the feeling that she was not alone. There
seemed to be a figure by the door, small and arrogant as it
had looked that day when Mrs. Allison had said, “Nothing can
go on as it was, Roy. You have a wife now.”
She heard her own voice, echoing in the empty hall.
"But it can,” she said. “It can and it will. Nothing you can
do can prevent it. It's all over. All over."
When she moved on there was no figure, however, and the
door was closed. She ran her fingers over it. The padlock was
still in place.
She was trembling, but she had something to do, and she
knew it was imperative that she do it at once. Holding the
banister to steady her shaking knees she went down the stairs
and then on down to the basement. She hurried as well as she
could, for now it was no longer a battle. It was a race, a race
against time. Yet she worked efficiently, piling the wood to
where the flames would reach the ceiling, pouring over it the
oil she kept for the open fires, opening a window so air could
come and feed the fire.
Then she put a match to the pyre.
She still had the queer somnambulistic look when she reached
the hall again. But her face was quiet, almost relaxed. She
stopped and looked up the stairs.
“I hope you will find peace,” she said. “And I never hated
you. Never.”
She slipped out quietly. From behind her came the dull roar-
ing of her fire, but she did not look back. Everything was still
on the street, except for far away the slow thud-thud of the
milkman's horse. He would give the alarm, she thought, but
it would be too late.
No one saw her re-enter the hospital. It was that darkest
hour of the night when hospitals die a temporary death; when,
their movements slowing down, they are finally still, their
ove


156
FAMILIAR FACES
eyes shut, their great sprawling bodies relaxed and inert. But,
once in her room, the full import of what she had done made
her feel faint.
"I have committed a murder,” she thought. “I have killed
Roy's mother."
But she had learned control in a hard school. When she
reached Roy's room again the nurse eyed her with approval.
“That's sensible,” she said. “I hope you had a good sleep.”
"How is he?"
"He's been breathing better the last few minutes. And his
pulse is stronger.”
She walked quite steadily over to the bed and looked down
at him. His eyes were closed, but he had lost the collapsed look
of a few hours before. She put out her hand and touched his.
“I had to do it, darling," she said. "Try to understand. I had
to destroy her.”
“That's what she said,” the nurse reported later to the night
superintendent. “ 'I had to do it. I had to destroy her.' Then she
fainted, right in my arms. Suppose she's killed somebody?”
"Don't be a fool,” said the night superintendent severely.
"She's been under a strain for years, the doctor says, nursing her
mother-in-law. And she's been worried about her husband. All
that's wrong with her is a nervous breakdown. Murder indeed!”
Louise lay in her bed. She slept a great deal. Sometimes she
would rouse to see daylight; or it would be night, with a nurse
and a lamp behind a screen in the corner. At first nothing had
any reality, save that Roy was going to get well. But as the
days passed, her head was clear, clearer than it had been for
a long time.
One morning she roused to see beside the bed the doctor
she had consulted. He was smiling down at her, and she had
a feeling that here was her judge; a kindly judge, but one who
would sentence her either to hope or to despair.


158
FAMILIAR FACES
Louise smiled up at him. There was love in her smile, but
there was also the tenderness of a woman whose husband is her
lover and also her child.
"You don't look as though you could carry me over the
threshold now, darling. And crush my gardenias.”
He was pushing the chair toward the bed. He looked up,
puzzled.
“Still raving, are you?” he said. “What threshold, and what
gardenias? Nice scare you've given everybody! Damn this chair
anyhow. How the devil am I to get near you?"
She watched him, smiling. What did it matter if he had for-
gotten? Men always forget the past. Women remembered, but
men forgot. They built up a defense, and never even knew it.
And now his arms were around her. He was holding her tight.
“My darling, my own darling," he said. “Your old man's
been having a private fit for days. What do you mean by crack-
ing up on me?"
But he was still Roy. When he had released her he sat back.
“I've got to get out of here," he said restlessly. “There's a
lot to be done. Listen, Louise. I'm sorry, but I have some bad
news for you.”
“Bad news?"
“Yes. The old house is gone. Burned down. We'll have to
take an apartment somewhere.”
She watched him.
“You'll miss it, won't you, Roy?”
“Miss it? Hell, no. It's been a white elephant for years. It
nearly worked you to death, too."
The house. Not his mother; the house had worked her to
death. But she knew now that it was unimportant. He had built
up a defense against the past, and it was blocked off forever.
"Yes," she agreed. “It was too big. It nearly worked me to
death.”


DOOR WOULD NOT STAY CLOSED 159
He leaned over and kissed her.
“We're both here,” he said huskily. “God, Lou, when they
told me you were sick"
How much had he known? How much of that long silent
battle between his mother and herself had he recognized? She
realized that she would never know, for he had already forgot-
ten. Nor would she ever know about the door, except that it
would never open again.





VII
The Empire Builders





TODDARD III was asleep. Three-quarters of the
bedclothing had slipped off and lay spread on the
floor, only partially concealing the fact that beneath
it lay Stoddard III's bathrobe, slippers, soft felt hat, a diction-
ary, and a cracker, which had been trod on and lay, a crumbled
and forlorn fragment, beside a piece of cheese.
Stoddard III was asleep—a figure of peace among chaos. The
remaining quarter of the bedclothing was tucked warmly about
his shoulders, but two-thirds of his body lay exposed, clad in
thin pajamas, to the chill of the room. A cold wind came in at
the open window and blew out the chintz curtain which cov-
ered his wardrobe; for Stoddard III was a fifth-former, and
the dormitory boasted no closets.
On top of the chiffonier were a shaving mirror and safety
razor-for Stoddard III was sixteen and an optimist-a pair of
military brushes, a family-group photograph in a frame, used
to hang neckties on, and the picture of a girl so placed as to
catch the eye on first waking.
Written primly in the corner of the margin was: “From your
friend, Lucille.” A dozen letters in the same hand lay in the
tray of Stoddard III's trunk, side by side with a loaf of stale
bread, half a stick of dynamite and a can of baked beans.
These letters began, “Dear friend Charles," and ended, “Your
friend, Lucille Graham.” Lucille was strong on the friend
business. Three-quarters of the dreams of Stoddard III, sleep-
ing or waking, centered about his friend Lucille.
Along the passage, in similar cubicles, lay similar prostrate
figures. Nor were the conditions greatly different. Talbot, in
number seven, boasted half a doughnut instead of the cracker
163


THE EMPIRE BUILDERS
165
Stoddard III dozed lightly. The refreshment of complete
unconsciousness was not for him, and at last he knew the
reason. He was hungry. Time was not when Stoddard III for-
got his stomach or its demands. He ate his way through his
days. Events occurred for him not by the clock but by meal-
time. Against hunger he provided as the traveler in the desert
against thirst. Hence the cracker and the cheese.
Still with his eyes closed he turned over and swung a languid
hand out of bed. His trailing fingers found the fragments of
the cracker and he grunted his annoyance. Wider awake, but
still with his eyes shut, he swept the floor for the cheese. There
was no cheese.
He made a supreme effort and hung over the side of the
bed. The hat, the dictionary-all were as he had left them; but
the cheese was gone. He stared blankly.
“Doggone it!” he muttered aggrievedly. "That boll weevil
next door's swiped it.”
Thoughts of vengeance rose in his mind, doing battle with
the lethargy of five minutes to seven.
“Shrimp!” he said vindictively. “Toad! Wop!”
Accused of theft, however, the Wop protested his innocence
vigorously.
“What'd I want with your old cheese?” he retorted.
“How'd I know you had any cheese?” His grievance grew.
“How'd I know what I smelled in there was cheese?” he
demanded.
The Wop was undersized, with a mouselike face relieved by
a wide smile. The effect of the smile was astonishing. It re-
vealed an engineering scheme of some dimensions, in which
wire, platinum, metal bridges, girders, joists and cement each
took its part. The Wop was having his teeth straightened.
Just now, though his mouth was open, he was not smiling. He
was inserting a piece of blotting paper, rather inky, between


166
FAMILIAR FACES
the engineering project and his upper lip, which was in a
chronic state of revolt.
“Betcha it was a mouse!” he said. “Something ate half a
doughtnut for me.”
Stoddard III paused in the act of straightening his room. The
straightening consisted of kicking his bathrobe under the bed,
gathering the cracker crumbs and throwing them out the
window, and dropping the remnant of a pound of butter into
his trunk. There being no time to get to the shower, he leaned
out the window, poured a glass of water over his hair, brushed
it down without drying, and was ready a minute and eleven
seconds before the bell rang.
He paused in front of the photograph, regarding it with
bitter, disillusioned eyes. Then he lounged to the door of the
next cubicle.
"Let's see the doughtnut,” he suggested. “If it was a mouse
you can see the toothmarks. If there are mice here I'm going
to get a trap."
“Ate it," was the laconic reply.
The day had started wrong for Stoddard III. So nicely bal-
anced is the equilibrium of the boy, so narrow the margin be-
tween joy and misery, so hyperacute his sensibilities, that a
trifle will change the scale of the day. A pebble may start an
avalanche.
However, it was not in wrath, but out of sheer dislike to
waste the remaining eleven seconds, that he took the blotter
from the Wop's writing table and, sauntering into the passage,
was able with a single gesture so to wedge the clapper of the
electric gong that it could not ring. Then, with his hands in
his pockets, he went leisurely down the staircase.
Things continued to go wrong. The headmaster eyed him
steadfastly now and then, as the belated school straggled gong-
less to breakfast. Stoddard III assumed an air of innocence,
and ate deliberately not only his own food but two extra bowls


THE EMPIRE BUILDERS
167
of oatmeal whose owners were late, all the extra toast on the
table, and put six lumps of sugar in a pocket against chapel.
There was five feet ten inches of Stoddard III, and he was
growing.
Until he was fed he had been a purely instinctive young
animal. Muffling the gong had been automatic, without malice.
But, having taken aboard sufficient food for three adults, the
insistent needs of the body satisfied for a time, his brain began
to functionate, quickened by the arrival of the mailbag.
Stoddard III was expecting a letter. He had been expecting
it, to be exact, for three weeks and two days. For three weeks
and two days he had watched the mailbag brought in, had
sat with his feet cold and his head hot while it was being dis-
tributed, meantime assuming an air of indifference, which
took the form of silent whistling. And for three weeks and
two days there had been no letter.
There was no letter that morning. She was not sick. At
least twice he had stealthily observed her brother, a sixth-
former named Graham, open a precious lavender envelope that
was undoubtedly hers, glance casually at its contents and stuff
it into his pocket. He did it that morning.
A wave of fury almost suffocated Stoddard.
“Whatta I care?” he said savagely to himself. “I guess there
are other girls. Plenty of them!”
But he lied, and he knew he lied. There were no other girls.
The school had been carefully located in a girlless country. It
was' as if that particular corner of the country had, fifteen or
sixteen years before, produced no girl babies. Between the
thirteen-year-olds and the grownups there was a great hiatus.
And, anyhow, he did not want other girls. He wanted Lucille.
At this period in his bitter reflections his right-hand neighbor
trod on his foot. Stoddard III jumped and viciously trod back.
Ensued immediately, beneath the table, a battle of feet, the
more amazing that it confined itself solely to lower members,


168
FAMILIAR FACES
those parts of the combatants visible appearing calm and placid,
albeit a trifle wary as to eyes.
Into his feet, then, Stoddard III put all the bitterness of three
weeks and two days, and emerged victor. He rose, calmer, but
with resolve written large all over him. He was done. He was
through. If Lucille thought he was going to mope round he'd
show her. She had no string to him.
“Pool?” the Wop asked him as together they left the dining
hall.
There was a quarter of an hour after breakfast when an agile
boy, by running, could get in ten minutes of pool before chapel.
“Nope.”
“We've got twelve minutes.”
“Busy,” said Stoddard III briefly, and turned on a heel that
ached with battle.
In his heart the Wop was Stoddard III's slave, concealing it
under a curt and very ofthand manner. So he watched him as
he went up the staircase and shrewdly summed up the situation
in one word.
"Canned!” was what he said to himself.
But not for nothing had the Wop his long nose and keen
eyes. A bystander as yet in the game of love, being of the type
that grows late and develops, from sixteen to twenty, enormous,
rather spindling height, he was content as yet to be an inter-
ested if somewhat contemptuous onlooker.
So he joined himself unassumingly to Lucille's brother, Big
Graham, and talked hockey; for in the field of sport all are
equal, and a fifth-former, who is as elusive on the ice as a
Cuban roach, may hail even a sixth-former as comrade.
"Say," he said somewhat later, “how about that fudge your
sister was going to send Stoddard? I'm in on it if it comes.”
"Didn't know about it.”
“She isn't sick, is she?”.


THE EMPIRE BUILDERS 169
“Sick? No. I guess she's busy having a good time.” Then,
with the good of the team at heart: “Look here; if you fellows
are going to be any good this spring you've got to cut out the
candy. Nix on the fudge!"
“Huh! We haven't had any yet.”
Nevertheless, in a way, the Wop was relieved. Between him
and Stoddard III had stood this barrier of girls. Great ideas
flooded his brain and cried for utterance, but Stoddard III had
not been in a receptive mood. Now,
Stoddard III had gone upstairs and, with black fury, had
taken from his chiffonier the photograph of Lucille and jerked
it from its frame. His first impulse was to tear it, to destroy,
to rend, to trample. His second was the one he obeyed. He
slammed open his trunk, flung in the picture without looking
at it-it alighted in the butter-and then banged out of the
room.
"I'm through!” he reiterated blindly as he stumbled down
the staircase toward the “math” room. “Hereafter, no girls.
I'm for myself now. For me!”
Nor does it augur that his despair was not sincere that he
stopped a third-former in the lower hall and forced him to
come over with half a piece of butterscotch.
The morning passed quietly. No reference was made to
the incident of the blotter. Stoddard III recited and in the ex-
citement of a psychic experiment found some relief for the
ache in his chest.
Briefly, the experiment was hypnosis. Stoddard III guarded
his secret jealously and was conscious of a thrill each time it
worked. His method of procedure was to sit staring fixedly at
the instructor and, having thus psychically put him under sub-
jection, to will him to pass by the experimenter on such pas-
sages of Latin grammar as he was unprepared with, and to call
on him for the ones he knew.
O


170
FAMILIAR FACES
So convinced was Stoddard III of the essential truth of his
discovery that for some time he had prepared only one por-
tion, in each class, of the lesson assigned.
“Verbs of caution and effort," said the master.
Stoddard III fixed him with his eye and willed to be called
on. This was his meat. The master cast an eye over the class.
Stoddard III willed.
“Stoddard,” said the master.
Stoddard rose, triumphant.
“Take the subjunctive with ut," he said glibly: "Verbs of
fearing take the subjunctive with ne affirmative and ne non or
ut negative."
“Very good. I'm glad to see one boy who has prepared the
lesson.”
The master looked gratified. Stoddard III looked becomingly
modest. Unluckily at this moment entered Big Graham with
a message. The experimenter, who should have been using his
will to prevent further interrogation, suffered distraction. “Go
on, Stoddard," said the master: “Volo and its compounds."
Stoddard III stalled desperately. “I beg your pardon, sir," he
said. “The lesson ends with verbs of fearing."
“Nonsense!”
Stoddard III turned on the class an eye that appealed for
justice.
“I'm sorry, sir,” he said. “I thought it ended there. That's all
I prepared.”
But he was demoralized. The master eyed him suspiciously
and went back a page. This was fatal. Stoddard III, at the end
of ten minutes, stood stripped of verbs of permitting, of deter-
mining, of wishing and of admonishing-stood, in fact, with
nothing but verbs of caution and fearing to clothe his igno
rance.
The Wop watched. Things were working out for him. It


THE EMPIRE BUILDERS
171
was when Stoddard III had sat down, with four extra pages of
Latin grammar as a punishment, that he sent him this note:
“I have a big scheme on hand. Do you want to come in
on it?"
But the moment was ill chosen. Stoddard III had not yet
reacted from his defeat.
"Too busy," he scrawled on it, and sent it back.
The Wop was not discouraged. He was one of those who
wait and, waiting, dream. In the intervals of dreaming he
read The Man Who Would Be King, done up in a paper cover
to resemble Cicero.
At twelve o'clock Stoddard III went to his room. He meant
to reinstate the photograph; but, finding that some wag had
already discovered the empty frame and had inserted a card,
“This space for rent!” he refrained. A sort of cold fury against
the world possessed him, not decreased during luncheon hour
by the arrival of diverse small boys from the lower forms,
bringing him anonymous notes, such as:
"Beware of vimmen!"
“Buck up, old top!”
"As good fish in the sea as ever came out of it!”
And, neatly cut from the rhetoric book: “The heart will
break, yet brokenly live on."
He ate an infuriated but hearty luncheon, consisting of
boiled beef and cabbage, potatoes, prunes, and sponge cake,
washed down with weak tea; and having an hour to himself
after preparation, shook the dust of the school from his feet
and started up the road.
"I've got to think things out,” he said to himself. “I've got
to think where I stand. It's up to me to make a fresh start.”
Visions of Lucille surrounded by a circle of boys obsessed
him. He saw her writing dozens of lavender letters, but not
to him.


THE EMPIRE BUILDERS
173
IC.
After looking the school over he had selected an accomplice in
Stoddard III; but the difficulty was that Stoddard III did not
know he had been selected. Did not, indeed, seem to want to
be selected. Was, as a matter of fact, the most popular boy in
the school and, as such, open only to exceptional offers. Hints
on the Wop's part that he had a great scheme had so far met
with discouragement.
"Scheme!" Stoddard III had said once. “The only scheme that
would interest me would be to get the cook fired and get some-
one in here who can cook. The food's fierce!" .
“Cook! Meals!” the Wop had sneered. “Don't you ever think
of anything but food? I've got a big thing on hand, but I don't
take in any fellow whose mind's in his stomach.”
Still, he clung to Stoddard III as the right person. He would
look well--the Wop needed an imperious type. Also, he was
amiable generally and not too keen. Intending to be the brains
of the undertaking himself the Wop felt that appearance and
disposition were the things he needed in a king. .
Yes—a king! The Wop was dreaming of empire.
The arrival of the stew was but a momentary distraction.
Automatically he emptied the plate of oyster crackers into the
bowl and passed it back to be filled again. Automatically he
singled out the largest oyster and left it to be eaten last. His
mind was searching for the bit of drama that would be neces-
sary to catch and rivet Stoddard III's wandering attention.
Suddenly the Wop emitted a low moan of agony and clapped
his hand to his jaw. Something hard had wedged itself into a
part of the engineering project in his mouth. The bridge was
blocked. Traffic ceased. The Wop, muttering horribly, got out
his scarfpin and fell to work. Hideous pains encompassed his
jaws and ran up his cheekbones.
“Oh, heck!" said the Wop, with his face twisted.
The extracted object, when it came, proved round and hard.


176
FAMILIAR FACES
Thus did the Wop, who was nothing if not forehanded, prepare
to disarm unjust suspicion.
"Let 'er go!” breathed Stoddard III, who had been narrowly
inspecting the premises beneath.
The rope dropped without a sound, and the process was
repeated at the window of Stoddard III; but with a difference.
The end was made fast to a handle of that very trunk which
contained the rejected photograph, the butter and other things.
Two ropes now dangled down the side of the sweetly dream-
ing building. Two ropes. One would have sufficed, but the
tradition of the Chimney called for two.
The Chimney was difficult of access. From time immemorial
it had been the scene of surreptitious smoking, of revolt and
bitter diatribe against the faculty. It was alike the school tradi-
tion and the school secret. It stood for the forbidden. It repre-
sented danger in the shape of a steeply sloping roof and a
narrow ridgepole. It was the Chimney.
The empire builders knew it well. Though not together, they
had visited it before. Here the Wop had composed his famous
limerick against the “math" master, whose name was Short.
na
TOW
There once was a teacher of math,
Who showed, as he stood in the bath,
A chest like a ladder,
A shape like an adder;
He was Short, and as thin as a lath.
It was felt in the school that to compare the mathematics
teacher to an adder showed positive genius.
Here, more than once, Stoddard III had carried Lucille's
photograph and, back braced against the warm chimney, had
defied the gales of the winter night, and dreamed of his lady-
love.


THE EMPIRE BUILDERS
177
C
Like the Chimney itself, the method of access was history.
Down one rope the two slid softly and tied a strong cord, at-
tached to a stone, to the other. To avoid mischance, the stone
was muffled in a handkerchief. As pitcher of the ball club, it
was Stoddard III's privilege to toss the stone across the roof.
At the first try he failed, and a muffled thud told that he had
struck the roof. Immediately a head protruded above.
“What you fellows doing?” a voice demanded. “Gwan away
and lemme sleep.”
“Shut up!” Stoddard hissed, and made another attempt.
This time the stone cleared; and alternately crawling and
crouching round the building—for such is the etiquette of the
Chimney—the two reached the other side. Stealthy hauling on
the cord followed. Came the cord first, yards on yards of it;
came at last the rope, to be anchored to the grating of the
gymnasium window; came, finally, triumph and completion.
One rope now reached from the Wop's room to the ground.
Another, from Stoddard III's window, passed over the ridge-
pole close by the Chimney and was safe to climb by, being
anchored to the gymnasium bars.
Five minutes later the conspirators were on the roof; six, and
they were seated on the ridge. Above loomed the Chimney,
which had heard many secrets and was to hear more.
“Now,” said Stoddard III judicially, "let's hear all about it.
What's this about pearls ?”
"Only that I guess we can have all we want if we go about
it right.”
“Where?” was the incredulous retort. "In a volcano? The
one you showed me was cooked.”
"That one was. The rest aren't. If I tell you something you
won't tell, will you?” .
"Nope."
“Honest?"


178
FAMILIAR FACES
“Look here,” broke out Stoddard III indignantly; “I've given
you my word. You know me—that's all!”
“All right,” said the Wop, reassured. “It's like this: You
know the Gulf of California?".
“Know of it? Yes.”
“Say, it's the greatest place in the world!” The Wop burst
out in one of his rare enthusiasms. “Undiscovered too. Nobody
goes there. It's a terra incognita."
"Aqua incognita."
“Oh, all right. But now listen! I've got an uncle who went
there once on a yacht. There's a big island there, full of Indians.
They don't belong to anybody. And they're fierce too. Can-
nibals, maybe. But that doesn't matter. They've probably only
got bows and arrows, and a few modern rifles,
“Is that where the pearls are?”
“Listen! The pearls are all right, but they're secondary. The
real thing is the island. The way I've figured it out, a couple of
fellows could go there and get their confidence"
"And get the pearls. I've got you."
"Now listen!” said the Wop desperately. "We'll get the
:: pearls, of course. Quarts of them. Maybe tons. I don't know.
But the real thing is that the right men could get that island,
and hold it.”
“What for?”
“Suffering jew's-harps!” cried the exasperated empire builder.
"Don't you see? We'd rule it! It would be ours."
“We'd rule it?”
“Well, I've got it worked out like this: You can be king.
Those fellows wouldn't understand anything else. They've got
to be ruled, and ruled good. They'll need a king and you can
be it; live in a tent by yourself, you know, and make 'em
kowtow to you—all that sort of thing."
“What about you?”


THE EMPIRE BUILDERS
179
"Listen! We'd have to have an army, wouldn't we? Once we
got the island, we'd have to hold it. I'd be your prime minister
and control the army.” He surprised a look of dark suspicion
on the future king's face and hastened to explain. "The pearls
would belong to the crown,” he said. “You could give me a
percentage as a sort of salary. But if you're going to take the
king job, and do it right, you can't manage the army."
“I don't like Indians. They're a dirty lot.”
"Not these. My uncle said he could see them bathing in the
sea. They wouldn't let the people from the yacht land, but they
watched them from the decks. He said there were thousands
of them.”
It did not behoove Stoddard III to yield too quickly. He sat,
his young legs stretched out along the ridgepole, and reflected.
"It's a good idea,” he conceded at last. "I'm pretty sick of
civilization, anyhow. It's so infernally hollow. There's nothing
to it.” The Wop's eyes gleamed; but, much as he had gained,
it was yet necessary to put the project beyond peradventure
of failure.
"I guess I ought to warn you—it's going to be dangerous
work, Stoddard. Two men against thousands."
"Brains against mere brute strength,” was Stoddard III's
terse comment. “One man with a modern rifle is equal to any
number of savages. Anyhow, I guess you know danger doesn't
scare me much.”
"That's why I picked you. A lot of dubs would be scared
off. Even if anything does happen to us,” said the Wop casually,
"we'll have had a lot of adventure first. My people think I'm
going to be a lawyer; but I can't see it."
"Here too. When do you calculate to start?”
Thus brought to bay, the Wop hesitated.
"Well, there's no hurry," he said. “We'll have a lot of plan-
ning to do."


180
FAMILIAR FACES
“Somebody else may step in and grab it—especially since
there are pearls there.”
The Wop sidestepped the pearls.
"It's not likely. It's been there a good while and nobody's
grabbed it yet.”
“Then you don't want to go right now?"
There was disappointment in the voice of the king-elect.
Visions had come to him-a picture of an empty room and dis-
carded books; of his disappearance and its due effect on Lucille;
followed later by his photograph in the newspapers, wearing a
crown with four points, each point surmounted by a large
pearl.
“Big things like this can't be done in a hurry."
“Then what are we doing now?”
"Listen! We've got to plan, haven't we? We can't go out
there and walk in and take possession, can we? We've got to
arrange things first. The first thing is an oath to secrecy. And
then there's the constitution.”
“What for? What have we got a king for if there's a con-
stitution?”
“Well, by-laws, anyhow.”
“By-laws!” said Stoddard III scornfully. “What do you think
this is going to be? A literary society? Now look here, if I'm
to be king, I'm king-that's all!”
The Wop was in the ancient position of the kingmaker. He
surrendered. It was arranged that instead of a constitution the
kingdom was to be run on a sixty-forty basis.
Something that had ached in Stoddard III all day had sud-
denly ceased from troubling. He even had difficulty in recalling
what it was. Ah, Lucille! Well, he was through with women.
Empire were beckoning. A crown had been offered him. Before
his young eyes lay spread a kingdom. Also, pearls. What was
the fair sex to him?


THE EMPIRE BUILDERS
181
wa
For love and dalliance he was substituting conquest, battle,
affairs.
He sat a little straighter and thrust his cold hands into his
trouser pockets. Thus placed, the right member encountered a
number of chocolates, bought to provide the necessary nourish-
ment a séance at the Chimney seemed to require. His hand
closed convulsively on one; then released it. It seemed hardly
fitting that the candidate for a throne should eat chocolates.
“Of course,” said the Wop reflectively, "you'll have to marry.”
“Marry!” He who had but just given up women! “Why?”
“To perpetuate the line," said the Wop impatiently. “What's
the use of establishing a kingdom and not having anyone to
leave it to?"
"I don't want to marry," the king-elect said doggedly.
“Now listen here! You've got to do it or the whole thing
will fall through. A king's not a free agent. He's got to do the
thing that's best for the country. If the chief has a daughter
they'll have some sort of chief, of course you can marry her,
and that will help a lot.”.
“Why don't you do it if it's so blooming necessary?”
The Wop gave him a glance of withering scorn.
"You're the king," he said coldly. “I'm only the head of the
army. You've got to perpetuate the royal line. I don't have to
perpetuate the army, do I?"
The king saw the justice of this, but remained sulky.
"A cannibal!” he sneered. “How do I know she won't get
tired of me and eat me? I'd look nice, wouldn't I? What does
she wear? Feathers? Look here,” he demanded; "why can't I
marry a white girl? Why can't I marry a nice girl and take her
there? What sort of company is that chief's daughter going to
be?"
But the Wop was wily.
"Well, we needn't settle that tonight,” he said. “But I'll bet,


182
FAMILIAR FACES
some of those girls are peaches! I've been thinking," he went
on, “that we'd better go out shooting pretty often. We'd better
know all there is about a gun. That's the first step.”
As president of the School Gun Club, Stoddard III was the
owner of a large and handsome shotgun. The Wop himself
possessed a number twenty-two of the size and general useful-
ness of an air rifle.
The change of subject cheered Stoddard III. He was willing
-nay, eager—to go out and subjugate a kingdom. It was mar-
riage that had startled him.
“We might,” suggested the Wop, “go out after squirrels
tomorrow. It will be good practice.”
“If we get any we can cook them on my alcohol stove."
The Wop rose cautiously and stretched his lean and frozen
legs.
“Then it's all right, old man, is it?" he asked.
“Far's I'm concerned,” said the king with an assumption of
nonchalance.
“You'll take the throne and I the army?”
“Surest thing you know!"
“Sixty-forty?”
"Yep.”
"Shake!” said the Wop; and they shook.
By reversing all the processes, the two empire builders got
to their rooms, coiled the ropes, greased their blistered palms
and went to bed. It was, as is not unusual, the king who slept
first and most quietly. It was the prime minister and com-
mander in chief who lay awake-as is the province of prime
ministers and commanders in chief-to devise ways and means.
DII
The Wop woke the next morning unrefreshed but trium-
phant. True, there was much remaining to be done, such as
reaching the island and subjugating it; but such trifles the Wop


THE EMPIRE BUILDERS
183
dismissed lightly. Only one thing troubled him. He had lured
his king with the bait of pearls. And he did not know whether
there were any pearls. The more he thought of it, the less likely
it seemed that there would be pearls.
Beyond the partition the future king lay in rapt thought and
ate a fruit biscuit. His eyes, wandering over the room, fell on
the empty photograph frame.
"Huh!” he said to himself. “She'll be sorry, all right!”
His mind sped across the continent to the Gulf of California
and there settled itself. He saw himself in a tent, on a raised
dais draped with skins. He saw natives entering, carrying the
royal oysters, which at a signal from him they opened, display-
ing pearly treasures within. Only the best he selected.
"Into the discard!” he would say to the inferior ones. “Give
'em to the poor, or stew them. It's all the same to me.”
As he lay, a shaft of yellow sunshine fell across the room.
He got up with more speed than he had shown for weeks and,
taking his shaving mirror-a tribute to vanity, not necessity-
went to the window. There he gazed and started. There was
no mistake. A fine down was showing on his upper lip, a soft,
silky shadow, following the arched curve of his upper lip.
Stealthily looking over his shoulder to be sure his door was
shut, Stoddard III projected his lower lip beyond his upper and
blew, his eyes riveted on the mirror. It moved. It waved. It
was!
There was a new dignity in Stoddard III as he went down-
stairs that morning. He walked with slow and manly move-
ments. His head, already potentially crowned, was held high.
His voice had dropped, too, and came determinedly from the
lower part of his thorax.
Meeting Lucille's brother in the library between periods, that
gentleman stopped and stared; for Stoddard III was bending
over an atlas, intent.
"Not feeling sick, are you, Stoddard?"


THE EMPIRE BUILDERS
185
“Nobody much. Old Randall's niece is visiting him.”
A burst of laughter floated to them, dominated by that for
which so long his soul had hungered in vain, a girl's silvery
tones.
“Come on!” said the Wop, almost violently.
"What's the matter with you?” Stoddard III protested.
"Can't I tie my shoe?” He straightened and looked down the
field. “She looks kinda pretty,” he said. “Pity those fellows
wouldn't stand back and let her have a little air."
Without a word the Wop turned and stalked toward the
open country, and after a moment Stoddard III followed him;
but the edge was off the afternoon. In his heart Stoddard III
knew, and knew that the Wop knew, that he was hunting only
because he must. His heart was not in it. It was back with the
laughing group at the Athletic Field. His abstraction finally
provoked the Wop to speech.
"Look here,” he said; "are we hunting rabbits or are we out
for a walk?”
“I'm coming right along. What's the matter with you?”
“There nothing wrong with me!” said the Wop darkly. “I
can't hit a rabbit at a hundred yards with this beanshooter of
mine. You've got a real gun, if you'd only use it. You've lost
two chances already."
"I guess I'm hungry,” said Stoddard III. “Let's have some-
thing to eat.” It was an hour and three-quarters since a substan-
tial corned-beef luncheon.
The sizzling bacon in a tin pan allayed his unrest. From
their pockets they produced potatoes, to be baked in the ashes.
Crackers were broken up and dropped in the hot grease until
saturated. There was an orange pie, colored with dye like an
Easter egg, and four bottles of pop. With this small but neces-
sary bridge of the gap between luncheon and dinner the empire
builders felt refreshed. The Wop put the pan in a tree and they
used it as a target.


186
FAMILIAR FACES
"You see,” he explained, "we've got to be more than good
shots. We've got to be dead shots!”
Being small and rather light, the recoil of Stoddard III's
weapon almost overbalanced him; but he stuck at it pluckily.
"I'm going to send for a drill manual,” the Wop observed
when, after ten rounds, the pan was practically intact. “If it
wouldn't take so long I'd go to West Point. I'm going into this
business with my eyes open. I've got a lot to learn."
“There isn't anything for me to learn, is there?” Stoddard III
tone was anxious.
The Wop reflected.
"I don't know. You ought to know some languages. And
you'd better bone at civil government.” .
The afternoon was growing warmer. The ground, fairly
hard earlier in the day, was softening. The place where a foot
had been became a small lake. Brown loam, dislodged, revealed
green spikes beneath that would presently unfold and become
leaves. Stoddard III stretched out on his jacket and watched a
bird wheeling in the sky.
“I wish I didn't have to marry a native,” he said, “I don't
think you're right about that, anyhow. A nice white girl could
teach them all kinds of things-sewing and cooking, and how
to fix their hair. She'd civilize them.”
“Now listen! There's nothing to that. Civilize them! Huh!
Girls don't sew or cook any more. They're only ornamental."
“Well, they are ornamental.”
He thought of the girl on the Athletic Field and the bit of
color her sweater and cap had furnished. Ornamental? Well,
rather!
“There's another thing," put in the Wop: “We don't know
anything about these people. They may have a lot of wives."
“A what?” said the astounded king-elect.
"If it's the custom to have several you'd have to do it. The


THE EMPIRE BUILDERS
187
king always has more wives than any of the rest.” The Wop
saw that his point was telling and pressed it. “Now, look here,”
he said, “be reasonable. You can't have a white wife and a lot
of native ones too."
Stoddard III sat erect.
“I don't approve of polygamy,” he said virtuously.
“Why? It's merely a matter of population. Where there are
more women than men, one man has to have a lot of wives-
that's all.”
“I don't believe in it,” protested Stoddard III. “It isn't right.”
“Pooh! Look at Solomon.”
Thus brought up short, Stoddard III fell back on a prefer-
ence.
“If I don't want more than one wife I won't have it—that's
all,” he said shortly. "I'm no Turk. Anyhow, one wife's trouble
enough."
The Wop put down his gun and folded his arms.
"It's like this, Stoddard,” he said: “either you're for this
project or you're against it. It's too big a thing to let one's
preferences interfere. Maybe I'd rather be king than prime
minister. But I don't think I'm fitted for the king end of it; so
I give it up. If you can't be big about this thing, give it up
that's all.”
"Oh, all right!" Stoddard III surrendered wearily. "I'll do
it all right. But I don't have to like doing it, do I?”
He scraped up the remains of the cold bacon grease on a
cracker and chewed it thoughtfully.
“Is that cooked pearl worth anything?” he asked.
“Not much.”
“D’you mind if I keep it?”
"No."
“How'd your uncle happen to cook it?”
The Wop hesitated.


188
FAMILIAR FACES
“He didn't cook it,” he said at last. “Some fool cooked the
oyster it was in.”
The subject, which was troublesome, was dismissed by the
sight of a rabbit, a very young rabbit, prematurely ushered into
a world in which spring was as yet but a promise. The Wop
seized Stoddard III's gun and banged away with both barrels.
The recoil sent him in a sitting posture into the fire. Still sitting,
he kept his eyes fixed on the spot at which he had fired.
“Got it!” he said; and getting up he brought it in. “It's
small,” he observed dubiously.
“Ought to be tender, anyhow. My stove wouldn't cook a big
one."
Caution dictated that the rabbit be then and there prepared
for the pan; but the lethargy of food and the breaking up of
winter was on them. Instead, they sat and planned. Stoddard III
was for calling the island Zenda, after the imaginary kingdom
of that name; but the Wop was for combining their two names
in its designation.
“Like Alsace-Lorraine,” he explained. “It will put us both
on the map if the thing goes.”
Stoddard III put up no fight. At the moment the present
interested him more than the future.
“How long's old Randall's niece going to stay?" he inquired.
"I don't know. I don't care, either.”
“Well, if she's a nice girl, I hope she stays a week”-defiantly.
The Wop's patience failed him. He saw his cherished plans
dying of the gleam of a red sweater on the Athletic Field and
a girl's gurgling laugh.
“Oh, you make me sick!” he said suddenly, and stalked away,
disappearing in a thicket.
Stoddard III's first impulse was to follow. His second, to
stay where he was and maybe doze in the sun. His third, on
which he acted, was to return as fast as possible to the school.


THE EMPIRE BUILDERS 189
He tucked the oozing rabbit into his game bag and started
back. He went slowly at first, but as he disappeared from the
possibility of being seen he broke into a dogtrot.
Miss Eloise Randall was wandering about the grounds. She
had changed the sweater and cap for something white, with a
pink cape over it, and she was surrounded by the captain of the
football team, the first baseman of the ball club, the quarter-
mile runner, and three other sixth-formers, including Big
Graham. Even at a distance Stoddard III saw, with scorn, the
festive array of these youths.
By a single, unobserved gesture he drew a part of the rabbit
out of the game bag which, containing the fragments of
luncheon and other trifles, thus appeared to be full and running
over. Then, very erect and swaggering, he passed the group
without a glance at it.
“Who's that with the gun?” he heard a feminine voice
ask. “Oh, the poor rabbit! He's killed a lot of them. How
cruel!”
“Stoddard! Hey, Stoddard! Out after something to eat, as
usual?” somebody called.
He passed on-outwardly calm, inwardly a savage, and
murderous.
“Boobs!” he said to himself. “Boll weevils! I'll show them!
I'll_”
“I guess he doesn't like girls,” said the voice. “He never even
looked at me!"
"That's his loss, then," Stoddard III heard Big Graham reply.
"He's only a kid, anyhow. Wait till he grows up and then
watch.”
Stoddard went on. For all his fury, he was mollified at her
words. If not paying any attention to her piqued her, he was
for a cold and detached attitude. She'd get sick enough of those
fellows hanging round. It was sickening just to watch them.
as


190
FAMILIAR FACES
Big Graham's tones were maudlin. Then it would be his turn.
Yes-his turn! The youth is father to the man. Male hearts
are caught on the rebound before twenty as well as after. And
if to masculine triumph be added the glory of cutting out a
brother of the lately beloved, and having him write home in
sixth-form cynicism that Stoddard III is dippy over a silly girl
who has been visiting the school, and generally being an ass
about her-to joy is added revenge.
Stoddard III borrowed an amethyst pin from a boy in the
fourth form and, having flung the rabbit into his trunk, pro-
ceeded to a toilet in which his socks, tie and the border of his
slightly exposed handkerchief were all of a rich lavender. His
bottle of brilliantine being empty, and his heavy pompadour
refusing to lie flat, he solved the problem by rubbing over it a
cake of wet soap.
The result was a stiff and highly polished surface, giving
much the effect of having been varnished.
Miss Randall was at the fifth-form table!
This is not so surprising as it seems, since Professor Randall
presided at that table. The surprising point is that she was at
her uncle's right and, therefore, next to Stoddard III. When he
was presented, Stoddard III bowed, by which is denoted a swift
jerk forward of the head from the neck up. When he sat down
he drew his chair away from hers and then, fearing this might
be noticeable, jerked it toward her.
The unlucky result was that he pinched her fingers. But the
young lady had the social graces of sophisticated sixteen. She
managed to smile.
"I'm awfully sorry!” he gasped.
“It's better now."
“I'm afraid you're only saying that."
“No; it's really better. It wasn't much, anyhow. But it's
funny when you think of it.”


THE EMPIRE BUILDERS
191
“Why?”
“First you stalked past and ignored me this afternoon; and
now you smash my hand.”
"I'm terribly sorry! I—".
“Where are the rabbits?"
"The- Oh! Upstairs. Don't give me away. I'm not allowed
to have them there."
“I think it is cruel of you to shoot a lot of little helpless
rabbits,” she said archly. “I was quite afraid of you this after-
noon. You looked so ferocious.”
He swelled, rather, and sat up in his chair.
"It's all right to kill rabbits. They destroy the crops.”
"I'd be afraid to fire a gun. Boys are so much braver than
girls, aren't they?”
Soup came. Meat and vegetables came. Stoddard III's hands,
well trained to their office, conveyed food to his mouth. Con-
veyed, to tell the truth, a great deal of food to his mouth. But
he tasted nothing. Mentally he was basking in the close
proximity of Miss Eloise Randall.
But he came to with a start. The Wop was glowering at him
from across the table. Stoddard III saw trouble in the eyes of
his prime minister. Not without a struggle would the Wop see
his cherished plans ruined by the chance invasion of a girl in
a white dress. Stoddard III threw him the sop of a reassuring
glance, but the Wop disregarded it.
"Where'd you go to this afternoon?” he demanded.
“Came home,” said Stoddard III airily. “You disappeared; so
I came home.”
“Oh, were you hunting too?” Miss Randall spoke across the
table winningly.
The Wop eyed her.
“Yes," he said shortly. And to Stoddard: “What'd you do
with my rabbit?"


192
FAMILIAR FACES
Stoddard III broke into a clammy sweat of rage and annoy-
ance.
“Brought it home,” he said; and, with an appealing look,
added: “With the others.”
The Wop was adamant.
"With the others! What others?” he demanded shrilly. “Far
as I know, there weren't any others."
The two glared across the table at each other and Stoddard
III was flushed.
“Well, you don't know everything," he said shortly.
"I know," began the Wop, and stopped.
There was desperation in Stoddard III's face. After all, a
henchman may heckle, but he may not outrage and affront.
The Wop ate his dessert.
“He's trying to make out that there was only one rabbit,
isn't he?” inquired Miss Randall sweetly. "How silly! I saw.
The bag was full.”
"He's a grouch," Stoddard III observed cautiously. “Say, did
you ever see a cooked pearl?”.
"No! A cooked pearl?”
“Yes-cooked in a volcano."
The barefaced assertion met the amazement it deserved.
"No!” said Miss Randall.
"Honest-a cooked pearl! If it wasn't cooked it would be
worth a lot of money.”
"Oh, where is it? I'm dying to see it.”
Stoddard III saved her life by producing the pearl. Caution
should have dictated a more private view, but Stoddard III,
between love and fury, was past caution. He took the pearl
from his corduroy waistcoat pocket and laid it on the cloth.
Immediately the attention of the table was riveted on it. Heads
craned. The Wop saw it and went pale. It was too much.
"Really!” cried Miss Randall, and poked it with a forefinger.
“How perfectly sweet! And it came from a volcano?"


THE EMPIRE BUILDERS
193
“You can have it if you want it.”
“Oh, may I? How dear of you! I just love it. Maybe I can
have it set in a ring.”
All might have been well—for the Wop was beyond speech
-had Stoddard III not boasted further:
"I know where there are tons of them to be had-and not
cooked, either.”
The table stirred, but the Wop had reached the limit.
“So do I,” he said distinctly. His ears were scarlet. “At Small's
Restaurant. That's where I got that one. Nearly broke a tooth
off on it.”
Miss Randall dropped the pearl and stared at him.
“Oh!” she said, and suddenly lost interest in the pearl.
The indirect result of the pearl's appearance commenced to
show itself the next day, when the entire fifth form, by ones
and twos, rushed into town after preparation and ordered raw
oysters at Small's. As the word spread, it was the entire school.
Small did an enormous business, and the infirmary began to
fill up with boys showing every evidence of overindulgence in
something fishy.
The direct result was a bitter quarrel between the Wop and
Stoddard III that afternoon. The Wop was acidly cold; Stod-
dard III heated.
“Well, it was my rabbit, wasn't it?”
“I didn't say it wasn't.”
"And I only told the truth about the pearl!”
“You could have kept your mouth shut-you a prime minis-
ter!” raved the future king. “You're the deuce of a diplomat!
What harm was that volcano story going to do?”
"Oh, rats!” said the Wop. “You said you knew where there
were tons of pearls—good ones! If you're going to tell every-
thing you know to every girl you meet a lot of chance we've
got to put anything over! You make me sick! You a king? You
ought to talk into phonograph records for a living."


194
FAMILIAR FACES
The full force of this only occurred to Stoddard III when
the Wop was gone beyond retort. During the evening study he
was divided between regret that his dream empire was over
and relief that he was no longer condemned to an Indian girl,
or perhaps a dozen Indian girls. Instead of Latin grammar, he
worked assiduously at an anonymous poem to Miss Randall, to
be dropped in the mailbox, stopping now and then to glower
at Big Graham, whom he suspected of doing the same thing-
a suspicion not altogether unwarranted, as Big Graham was
asking for a rhyme to "limpid.”
He was rather pleased with the poem, which was not too
personal, but mentioned a dismal day enlivened by a scarlet
sweater and two bright eyes. He cornered “limpid,” and, any-
how, there was no rhyme to it. He did not sign the poem; but,
after some thought, he placed a rough drawing in the lower
left-hand corner of a gun and a game bag, from which pro
truded something resembling a King Charles spaniel, but
meant for a rabbit.
Fate was unkind to him at dinner. The headmaster had
invited Miss Randall to the sixth-form table, where she sat at
his right hand. Beside her loomed Big Graham. Even at that
distance, Stoddard III perceived that Big Graham was gone
far gone.
Stoddard III eyed him scornfully and plotted treachery to
the Wop.
This treachery took form after dinner, in the half hour before
evening preparation. Big Graham had been called to an athletic
committee meeting and reluctantly left Miss Eloise Randall
alone.
“How long are you going to be here?” Stoddard III asked,
sauntering toward her.
“A week.”
“Why don't you make it a month?”


THE EMPIRE BUILDERS
197
“You come back here and clean up this place. What d’you
mean by spoiling my pillow?”.
Came nothing but silence and the closing of a door, followed
by sounds through the thin partition, which the Wop accu-
rately judged to be Stoddard III getting his alcohol stove from
under a pile of boots. The Wop strode to his window and flung
the piece of rabbit out into the night.
At eleven o'clock that night the Wop woke at the call of a
sensitive nose. From the next room came stealthy movements
and a hiss of frying. Over everything was the delicate aroma of
hot butter and hare sauté. The Wop lay and sniffed, and his
heart was bitter within him. He had schemed great schemes
and a glance from a girl's eyes had ruined them!
"Oh, the devil!” said the Wop wearily, and turned over; but
not to sleep.
In his rage he had dined lightly, and insistent rumblings just
below his breastbone betrayed his stomach's resentment. And
besides, the Wop was suffering remorse. He had not been quite
square, and he knew it.
At last he could stand it no longer. The frying had taken
on a sharper hiss. Stoddard III sneezed beyond the partition,
which meant that the familiar stage of pepper and salt had
been reached. The Wop got out of bed.
Two minutes later a chilly form in pajamas was feeling over
the ground below the dormitory windows and muttering as it
searched. An onlooker would have seen the figure stoop, stick
something in the pajama pocket, and proceed laboriously up
a rope to an open window, where it disappeared without
sound.
Shortly after, the door into Stoddard III's room opened softly.
Nothing was visible in the darkness save a small blue flame,
six inches from the floor, and a brooding shadow above it. The
Wop closed the door behind him and advanced.


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199
"Don't want that old housekeeper prying round in my
trunk,” he said. “She took a piece of Limburger cheese out of
it last week. She's too darn officious.”
The Wop, no longer rumbling, yawned and went off to his
bed. Stoddard III struck a match and by the small flame in-
spected his upper lip. The result was unsatisfactory, lacking
the strong glare of the sun. Somewhat sheepishly he took some
cold cream from the chiffonier and rubbed it over his upper
lip. Then he crawled into bed.
Thus, over food, were friendly relations between the king-
elect and his prime minister reestablished. The Wop had had
his lesson. Thereafter, during the period of Miss Randall's visit,
he suffered in silence.
Suffer he did, for Stoddard III was plainly infatuated. And
the Wop's shrewd eyes told him that Miss Randall was like-
wise affected. Not openly, but in a dozen subtle ways she
showed it. Heretofore, visiting females had deigned no interest
in any but the big boys of the sixth form. Miss Randall took the
fifth form to her heart, was at its practice baseball games, was
always about when its study hours were over, and petted the
small boys in knickers who rooted for it.
Fear possessed the Wop-abject fear. Suppose Stoddard III
and she became engaged before she left? Where, then, were his
schemes? There was a sort of doglike quality in Stoddard III's
eyes those days that suggested fidelity.
The Wop knew a fellow in college who had met a girl at
prep school and got engaged to her, and was still engaged.
The thought made him desperate.
"Blamed ass!” he muttered in disgust. “Spoiling everything!
How's a fellow to plan with a bunch of curls hanging round
spoiling everything?”
Luckily a quarrel over Lucille's picture lost two whole days
for Stoddard III and gained them for the Wop.


200
FAMILIAR FACES
“If you'll give me your picture I'll frame it," Stoddard III
had said. “I've got a frame empty and ready.”
“What was in the frame before?”
“Just a photograph," he evaded.
“Whose photograph?”
"What's that got to do with it?”
“Oh, I just wondered; I don't take a good picture, anyhow."
"Aren't you going to give me one?” said Stoddard III in a
maudlin tone. “If you do I'll look at it every day. It will help
me to remember you.”
"Humph!”
“I mean," he said, agonized, "it will help me to remember
just how you look. I'll never forget you. Never, Miss Randall!”
: "I'll think about it,” she observed rather frigidly, and was
thoughtful during the remainder of the walk they were taking.
That evening Stoddard III saw her in earnest conversation
with Big Graham, and suffered in the depths of his guilty
heart-suffered jealousy and fear. He stole a minute after
dinner and besought her.
"How about that photograph?” he asked.
“You're not going to get it.”
“Why not?”
“I know about the picture of Mr. Graham's sister, and your
taking it out and advertising the space for rent. I'm not looking
for space for rent.”
“I didn't do that!” His voice was desperate. “Honest-I
didn't even think of it, Miss Randall. Some darned fool— Look
here; you don't think I'd do a thing like that, do you?”
"Where's the other photograph?” asked Miss Randall with
suspicious sweetness.
“Honestly—I never cared for Lucille! Oh, I liked her. She
was a friend of mine; but that's all. Since I first saw you that
day on the field—”


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201
"Where's the other photograph?”
“In my trunk, I guess. I don't know.”
“Take my advice,” said Miss Randall coldly: “Get it out and
put it back in the frame. I don't like fickle people, Mr. Stod-
dard.”
For two days she ignored Stoddard III and developed a be-
lated interest in the sixth form. Big Graham beamed and hung
on her every glance. For two long days Stoddard III watched
her from corners and invented excuses to come near and catch
her eye. She looked through him, round him. For all she saw
him, Stoddard III's sturdy form was of empty air; a ghost; a
wraith; mist of the morning.
The Wop hid his triumph and waited. Came the last day of
her stay and things were still in statu quo. Came luncheon, and
for the first time she saw Stoddard III again. She turned full
on him the battery of her eyes and asked for the salt. Stoddard
III beamed and passed her the bread. She did not notice the
difference. Under the shelter of the tablecloth she laid a soft
hand on his knee.
"I've been cruel,” she said. “I'm sorry!"
Having caught Stoddard III unexpectedly with his mouth
full of potatoes, he gulped hurriedly and choked. In the midst
of his paroxysm, however, he covered her hand with his. And
when he could speak he said:
“I've been feeling awful!”
“But now we're friends again?”
“Forever and ever!” he said ardently.
Across the table he caught the Wop's eye. Before the meal
was over he had made an appointment with her in the grounds
for nine-thirty that night.
"To say good-bye,” he said.
“I don't want to go," she breathed. “You know that!”
"I'll ask you about that tonight,” he said significantly.


202
FAMILIAR FACES
The Wop gathered not the words but the import, and felt
a sinking of the heart.
That afternoon the mail brought Stoddard III a letter in a
lavender envelope. He received it with outward coldness and
a roaring in his ears. It began abruptly with a request for the
return of her photograph and a removal of the sign, “This
space for rent”; and ended with the caustic comment that he
would not hear from her again, as he had a new friend.
Stoddard III was angry, alarmed, distressed. He could not
return the photograph as it was covered with butter. And he
did not want to return it. Quite suddenly, when he was six-
teen years and three months old, Stoddard III confronted the
masculine problem of the ages: Why, in a monogamous coun-
try, born of monogamous parents into a monogamous religion,
should a man be capable of loving two girls at the same time?
Not only capable, but actually doing it. Not that Stoddard III
used this language. Love was a subject discussed only in the
abstract. What he said to himself was to the effect that it was
the deuce of a note when a fellow was stuck on two girls at
once!
But he faced his situation like a man and grimly drew his
conclusion, which was that, after all, if there was polygamy
on the island he would have no right to interfere with the
native custom.
Placing a blotter on the photograph and pressing with a hot
iron, surreptitiously taken from the housekeeper's room, did not
remove the butter. Anyhow, he did not wish to part with the
picture. He derived a melancholy pleasure from looking at it.
And as discovery was imminent he flung the hot iron into his
trunk and went down town.
Miss Randall spent the afternoon in packing, and Stoddard
III in Small's, eating three dozen raw oysters. At the end of
that time his zeal was unflagging, but his allowance had failed;
and the offer of his fountain pen for another dozen met with


THE EMPIRE BUILDERS
203
failure. To tell the truth, during the week Small had accumu-
lated various articles not immediately negotiable; and as the
oysters were purchased on a cash basis he was loath to take
more. The collection thus far included studs: cuff links; scarf-
pins; numerous pocketknives; a photograph frame from which
a doting mother's picture had been removed; a knife, fork and
corkscrew, folded in a leather case; a brass inkwell; three foun-
tain pens, and a watch fob.
"What do you boys think this is, anyhow?” Mr. Small de-
manded of Stoddard III. “A secondhand store?”
"It's a good pen. It cost two dollars and a half,” Stoddard III
pleaded. “I've hardly used it. I use a pencil mostly.”
“What strikes me,” Mr. Small went on reflectively, “is why
the dickens that school of yours has gone oyster-crazy! We've
had runs on oysters before, but they ain't been one-two-three to
this one. What's wrong at your place? Don't they feed you any
more?”
Stoddard III did not reply. He was going through his
pockets.
"How about this key ring?” he inquired. “It's silver.”
There was something desperate about Stoddard III and Mr.
Small felt it. He eyed him keenly.
"Tell you what I'll do,” he said with deliberation and weight:
“I don't keep any charge accounts, but if you're as bad off as
that you can pay me next week. I don't like to see you fellows
going hungry."
Hungry! As Stoddard III sat down to his fourth dozen his
very soul revolted. He had hoped for a pearl. A pearl to give as
a pledge to the pearl of all girls. A pearl that would redeem
him from the stigma of the Wop's bold statement anent the
cooked one. A pearl that she could keep; and that later on,
when he had some money, he could put in a ring. A pearl
that
Ye gods, how he hated oysters! How he hated the very shape


THE EMPIRE BUILDERS
205
a case of pure infatuation. There are,” he reflected, “some folks
who have the appetite and others who have the room; but it's
not often they happen together.”
“Will you?” implored Stoddard III.
Mr. Small folded up the corners of a piece of pasteboard
until it assumed the shape of a box.
"I'll make a bargain with you,” he said. “We don't have
your kind often and I'd hate to lose you. I'll do it if you'll go
home and take a liver pill.”
Stoddard III agreed. He thought it might be a good idea. He
felt rather queer. With the box under his arm, he walked back
to the school slowly. There was no hurry. Miss Randall was
packing. He tried not to think of oysters, but the very hand-
kerchief with which, ever and anon, he mopped his cold fore-
head was scented with them. Ugh! And again, ugh!
The oyster is a curious food. There is nothing halfway about
it. One either loves an oyster or hates it. Stoddard III hated
oysters. He could not bring himself to any further search for
pearls. He thrust the box of oysters into his trunk and tried
to forget about it.
During the remainder of the afternoon he felt rather unwell
and, the taste of the obnoxious bivalves persisting, he attempted
to drive it away with two bottles of pop. At five o'clock Pro-
fessor Randall's wife had a farewell for her niece and invited
the school.
Stoddard III drank two cups of tea and ate a variety of sand-
wiches, specializing on cheese; but his stomach continued
restive, and even the solace of the hearty dinner he offered it
at seven merely appeased it for a time.
The Wop watched him. He had put in an anxious day, but
he felt despairingly that the evening would seal the doom of
his plans. Stoddard III had a light in his eyes compounded of
indigestion and determination. The Wop, viewing it darkly
210


206
FAMILIAR FACES
from the outside, decided that it meant an engagement. What
part was indigestion he took for preproposal qualms. He con-
sidered. Before dinner he approached Stoddard III.
"How about the Chimney tonight? I've thought of a lot of
things that need talking over.”
"Can't. Got an engagement."
“What sort of an engagement?”
“Now see here,” said Stoddard III; “it's none of your busi-
ness what it is. Just because we've agreed to do a certain thing
doesn't give you any right to be always butting in on my affairs,
does it?"
“I've got some money from home. If you like I'll get some
things to eat."
“I'm not hungry. Sorry, old top. If tomorrow night will do,
all right.”
“I'll get some wieners and rye bread. How'll that do?”
“No; thanks.”
“Now listen!” the Wop said, and played his ace of trumps.
“This is important and it's got to be decided before we go on.
You come and I'll buy some oysters down at Small's. We can
sit up snug as anything, and eat and talk, and maybe get a
pearl; and—”
“Ye gods!” cried the nauseated king-elect. “Haven't I told
you no? No! No!! And don't come round here talking about
oysters when I don't feel just right.”
“Well, you needn't be so short about it. What time's your en-
gagement?”
The Wop was thinking hard. Having failed with his trump
card he fell back on a finesse.
“Nine o'clock or so."
"Well," argued the Wop, “this thing I want to put up to you's
important, but it needn't take a lot of time.”
Ten minutes later the king-elect, goaded to compromise,


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207
agreed to a short séance on the roof, in return for which royal
favor his henchman was to see that his final interview with
Miss Randall was undisturbed. He impressed the gravity of
the situation on the Wop.
"Now this thing's got to go right,” he said. “It's the last
chance I'll have and I wouldn't miss it for a thousand islands.”
“Chance for what? You're not going to get engaged to her,
are you?"
"Of course not! But”-he turned a gleaming eye toward the
Wop-"if I want to I will, and don't you forget it! I haven't
agreed yet to that chief's daughter proposition and I don't
know that I'm going to do it.”
Stoddard III made a careful toilet that evening and emerged
a symphony in bright green-tie, socks and handkerchief. Skin,
too, had there been a mother round to notice the corners of
his mouth and the hollows on each side of his royal nose. The
smell of boiled turnips filled the dining room, aided and
abetted by brown and crackly roast pork.
Under the stimulus of Miss Randall's presence he ate heartily,
especially pork and rice pudding. He was greatly excited,
almost brilliant. It was then that he made his celebrated pun on
the name of the infirmary nurse, familiarly called Ann behind
her back. "Ann what?" asked Miss Randall, twisting a de-
lightful curl that hung over her shoulder.
"Ann T. Septic,” said Stoddard III; and then and there he
became the school wit.
"Septic? What a funny name! Oh, I see! How clever of you!
How awfully clever! You're the quickest boy I ever knew.
Honestly!"
On the strength of this Stoddard III took what remained of
his right-hand neighbor's pudding. He was feeling fine-except
for a slight headache. He didn't know that he'd ever felt better.
His mind was working without effort. He could think of a


208
FAMILIAR FACES
dozen puns, and did some of them very bad. Miss Randall
giggled. The table listened and chuckled. His temperature was
about a hundred and one.
"You won't forget, will you?” he whispered ardently
under the clatter of the school rising and pushing back the
chairs.
“No, indeed! Are you sure you won't?”
"Me!” He was astounded, hurt. “What do you think I am ?
I'll be there—sure: with bells on.”
She shot him one quick glance from under her lashes. There
was no doubt about Miss Randall's sentiments. She was quite
openly gone.
The tactics of girls at sixteen are instinctive and divide them-
selves into two classes: Those who woo by first coquetry and
then indifference, who keep the loved ones dangling, alter-
nately happy and despairing; and those who by sheer open
devotion proclaim themselves the slaves, and the youths of
their affections the masters. It is about this class that the great
love stories of the world have centered.
Miss Randall was willing to be a slave.
Evening study was a dream hour, in which Stoddard III
married Miss Randall; and under her gleaming veil she wore
string on string of pearls. During the last quarter of an hour
he built her a palace on the island, patterned rather after an
illustration of Maxfield Parrish's for the Arabian Nights, and
consisting mainly of long vistas of marble columns, ending in
two thronelike chairs on a dais. An unhomelike place, but
royal; very royal! Before the throne where slaves kneeling with
jars of pearls. The pearls made him think of oysters. His head
ached.
The room was quiet, that quiet which contains an infinitude
of small sounds—the muffled shuffling of feet, the moving of
books and turning of pages. The master in charge sat at his


THE EMPIRE BUILDERS
209
desk and made a sketch of a nine-hole golf links for the back
field, which he intended to suggest to the executive committee.
Stoddard III was startled once, on looking up, to observe that
there were two of him, wearing two red neckties and two pairs
of glasses. There was, however, only one pair of hands. This
reassured him. His head continued to ache.
At nine-ten, true to his promise, Stoddard III was at the
Chimney. It being early, and a night the German master in-
variably took the eight-eleven train to call on a young lady
named Rosenbauer, access to the Chimney had been easy and
ropeless. The tradition of Wednesday evenings, between the
eight-eleven out and then ten-thirty-eight back, was to reach
the Chimney through the German master's window, which
opened on the mansard. It was the only window so placed.
The Wop had brought peanuts. Beyond that he had no plans.
He had worried an inventive brain to the breaking point, but
nothing had come of it. Unless fate intervened, Stoddard III
would meet Miss Randall at nine-thirty. Stoddard III had it
bad. All the signs showed it. In spite of Lucille's displace-
ment, the Wop suspected in Stoddard III a sort of doglike
fidelity that would hold to Miss Randall through the years.
He produced the peanuts.
“Have some?”
“I'm not hungry,” said Stoddard III, but took one.
Now the way of one peanut leads to a second, and that to a
third-and so ad infinitum. During the conversation that fol-
lowed Stoddard III munched steadily. They took the taste of
oysters out of his mouth.
"Now," he said, “out with it and be quick. I haven't a lot of
time.”
The Wop sparred for time.


212
FAMILIAR FACES
The Wop had failed, after all. As Stoddard III steadied him-
self by the Chimney the clock in the town, a mile away, struck
the half hour. Stoddard III steadied himself by the Chimney
and down below a girlish figure emerged from Professor Ran-
dall's house and stood looking about. Stoddard III could see
the figure and instantly the nausea deserted him.
Gone was everything else. The code. Secret Service. Pearls.
The dream of empire. Remained only a girl below, waiting for
him. “So long!” he said, and slid carefully down the slope to
the roof.
The girlish figure waited, and Stoddard III made his way
along the gutter; and the German master, who had missed his
train and caught a cold, was on his way up to his room, carry-
ing a pitcher of hot lemonade.
Stoddard III, halfway through the window, heard him com-
ing, made a desperate effort to reach the corridor before he
turned the corner, failed and dived under the bed.
The master entered, swore gutturally at the open window,
slammed it down, took a drink of hot lemonade, wound his
watch, sneezed, took more lemonade, drew off his coat, took
two quinine pills and then sat down on the bed and took off
his shoes.
The open window was on his mind. Suspicion has its native
habitat in the minds of masters. More than once he had sus-
pected the use of that window as a way to the roof. So now,
thoughtfully, he went to it and, raising it, stuck his head out.
“You poys up there on the roof!” he called. “This vindow
will be locked all night. And my door likevise. Goot night!”
He banged it shut, fastened it, locked his door, put the key
under the pillow of his bed and proceeded with his disrobing.
A quarter to ten struck on the town clock. At ten o'clock
the master was in bed, with his reading lamp on and the key
under his head. The pitcher of hot lemonade was on the floor


THE EMPIRE BUILDERS
213
beside him and every time he sneezed he took a sip of it. He
read Schopenhauer until midnight!
And under the bed lay tragedy. None the less tragedy that
after ten, when hope was dead of a locked door, Stoddard III
dozed occasionally. Dozed and dreamed miserably. Dozed to
waken to an intolerable thirst, with the pitcher of lemonade
within touch, but, alas! not within reach.
At midnight the master turned the light out and lay reflect-
ing. He reflected on many things. On the general cussedness of
boys. On their lack of imagination. On the charms of Miss
Rosenbauer. He slept finally; and Stoddard III, rousing to
thirst and reckless with it, finished the lemonade, which was
very strong, and settled to the deep sleep of despair-four
dozen raw oysters, cheese sandwiches and two cups of tea, roast
pork, potatoes, turnips, sliced tomatoes, two saucers of rice
pudding, a bag of peanuts and half a pitcher of strong lemon-
ade, to which had been added a dash of whisky.
At two A.M. a cold wind came up, bringing a flurry of snow.
Stoddard III slept soundly through a tapping at the window,
which roused the master; slept soundly as the Wop was ad-
mitted, recognized and grimly but silently appraised and
allowed to proceed to his own quarters; slept while the irate
Wop, who had waited for the rope of succor, which had not
come, proceeded to Stoddard III's room and found it empty.
The Wop was dazed. Recklessly he turned on the light and
stared about it. Then, on tiptoe, he made a circuit of the dor-
mitory to see if Stoddard III was sharing another's couch. He
was not. Awful thoughts filled the Wop's imaginative mind.
The terror of two A.M. clutched him.
At dawn the dormitory master woke to find the Wop, fully
dressed, standing over him. He sat up, with the specter of
fire in his mind.
“What's the matter?” he demanded.


214
FAMILIAR FACES
“It's Stoddard III, sir. I don't know where he is.”
“Isn't he in bed?”
“No, sir. He hasn't been to bed at all.”
The dormitory master put on his trousers and slippers,
firing questions meantime. The Wop was reticent, acknowl-
edging the Chimney and Stoddard III leaving him there. Awful
visions of a crushed figure on the ground filled the master's
mind. Into the chill dawn he and the Wop hurried. The wind
blew the master's dressing gown round his legs. The snow got
into his slippers. But there was no Stoddard III.
At last the master turned and faced the Wop.
"Now look here,” he said; "you're keeping something back.
You know where that boy is.”
"I do not, sir.”
“You've got an idea."
"Not-not unless he has eloped, sir."
"Eloped!”
“It was Professor Randall's niece. He was to meet her at
nine-thirty."
The master swore softly and padded through the spring snow
to Professor Randall's. The Wop followed. He did not know
what else to do. He was quite certain that Stoddard III had
cloped-certain, and angry. It was disloyal. It upset his plans.
It left him, so to speak, kingless.
But Professor Randall reported his niece asleep.
Breakfast found the school agog. Stoddard III had run away;
had, it was discovered, gone into the winter night hatless
and coatless. The headmaster did not come to breakfast, but
sat at the telephone. The Latin master, recalling verbs of
admonishing, wishing, permitting, determining, and others,
felt qualms. He had been severe! But the really worried person
was Mr. Small, to whom the station master had confided that
Stoddard III was missing and that the school had inquired
about the passengers on the night trains.


THE EMPIRE BUILDERS
215
Mr. Small was stricken to confession.
"Five dozen in all,” he finished. “Large ones too. Now a boy
can eat two dozen and get away with it; but after five dozen
he's not responsible. Or take it the other way round: A boy
who will eat five dozen raw oysters ain't responsible. Anyhow,
I wish I'd never given him any."
Miss Randall left at eight-forty-five o'clock. The news had
been kept from her. She left with her small chin held high
and her eyes slightly red. She wore Big Graham's frat pin and
promised to write to at least six boys. But her eyes searched the
crowd in vain for Stoddard III.
At ten o'clock the German master went to his room for more
quinine, and in the hall met a maidservant, screaming violently.
When reduced to speech she gasped that she had run the carpet
sweeper under the master's bed and struck something which
groaned.
It was thus ignominiously that Stoddard III, king-elect, was
discovered.
Four days later Mrs. Stoddard II sat in the consulting room
of the school infirmary and wrote a letter to Mr. Stoddard II.
"He was delirious for two days," she wrote. “He seemed to
think he had a harem or something, and had to eat oysters to
supply his wives with pearls! He is all right now, and very
amiable-except yesterday, when the nurse offered him some
clam broth.
"I shall bring him home tomorrow for a week. The doctor
says he is run down and has been studying too hard; but I am
convinced that that is not the real reason.
"He is growing; and, frankly, I do not think he has been
getting enough to eat. I am not very keen about boarding
schools, anyhow. Not enough food and a starved imagination
is the way I sum up the situation.
“You might have Maggie order some sweetbreads, and do


THE EMPIRE BUILDERS
217
"Did you find anything?"
The Wop extended his hand. In the palm lay a small, irreg-
ular pearl, odorous, but-a pearl.
“What d'you call that?” he demanded.
The king-elect lay back on his pillow and smiled. Gone were
madness and infatuation. Gone was the bitterness of three
weeks and two days of waiting. Back on its throne was reason.
"Look here,” he said; “I'm with you on the island business.
But we're going to can that polygamy stuff. See?”
"All right,” said the prime minister. “What'll I do with the
pearl?”
“I'm going to send it to a girl," said the king-elect firmly.
“Get a pen there and write for me, will you?”
The prime minister obeyed.
"Ready?” asked the king-elect. “All right! 'Dear Lucille ”
A breeze came through the open window and past the trunk,
lid raised and airing. It stirred the pajamas round the Wop's
thin ankles, played over the faintly darkened upper lip of
Stoddard III, and overturned on the chiffonier the photograph
of a girl, somewhat stained with melted butter.
"'Dear Lucille: I have been sick, but am better. A friend of
mine is writing this for me. I send enclosed a small pearl. Some-
day I shall tell you what it means and maybe get you some
better ones.”
The Wop lifted his eyes and met Stoddard III's kingly-elect
ones. For a moment their glances locked. Then Stoddard III
triumphed. The Wop bent over the paper.
"Is there an 'e' in writing?” he asked.





VIII
Lily Comes Home at Last
es
One





EGGY LEDYARD tore open her letter from Paris
with a sigh.
“From Lily,” she said resignedly. “I only hope she
doesn't want me to buy her shoes again. The last ones traveled
back and forth for months.”
Paul put down his coffee cup and smiled at her.
"Well, remember what she has to keep up," he observed
mildly. “It can't be easy, after fifteen years."
Peggy, however, was staring at the letter much as she would
have regarded a king cobra.
“Paul, listen!” she said in a desperate voice. “She's coming
over, and she's bringing Charles with her. I can't bear it. I really
can't bear it."
"You've borne it pretty well for a long time, Peg."
"That was different. They were in France, and you know
how the French regard those things. But here, in this house, and
of course Evalyn has to be back from school because of those
wretched measles. What am I to do?”
Paul folded the morning paper, preparatory to reading it in
the train on his way to town. He seemed entirely calm.
“If you can tell Evalyn anything about the facts of life that
she doesn't know, all I can say is that you've been holding out
on me, Peg. What does Lily say?"
“Oh, the usual thing. The war, and Charles has some business
to look after. I do wish she'd remember this isn't Europe. What
is a great romance over there is merely a scandal here."
“After all this time it amounts to a marriage, I imagine,” Paul
said dryly. “And if the French still regard it as a great romance,
221


224
FAMILIAR FACES
almost certain that Evalyn was listening from the landing, got
up and closed the door.
"I'm not asking very much of you,” she said. “She is my
sister, and I'm taking care of her. But I would like to have you
all to dinner one night. That's the least you can do. After all,
it isn't as though she is a-well, a loose woman. She's given her
life to Charles. Paul says it amounts to a marriage; a sort of
common-law marriage."
Aunt Clara sniffed, but in the end they agreed. Charles of
course would not be present. Then they had tea, and Evalyn
was brought in, very demure and pretending she had no idea
what it was all about.
Lily—and Charles, of course-landed the next day, and Peggy
met them at the dock. She had not seen Lily for years, and in
spite of the photograph she looked for someone rather matronly;
in other words, a common-law wife of almost forty who had
more or less settled down to darning Charles's socks and count-
ing his laundry. What swept toward her, however, was a slim
elegant creature in black, looking barely thirty under her veil,
and almost entirely surrounded by a maid, a yapping small dog,
a dozen foreign-looking pieces of luggage, and Charles.
"My sweet sister!” said Lily, being very French and holding
out her arms. “How long it has been!”
Peggy, who was already attempting mentally to fit at least
a part of this entourage into her household, received a peck on
the cheek stoically and said:
“Good gracious, Lily, how young you look.”
"I am not so old,” said Lily, annoyed. “And here is Charles,
my dear Charles, so good, so kind, my Peggy; you would not
believe.”
Peggy, after a glance at Charles, who quite clearly wanted to
throw the dog overboard, believed it thoroughly. She had always
rather liked Charles.
“Also Celeste,” said Lily, barely letting Charles have time to


LILY COMES HOME AT LAST. 225
shake hands. “I cannot live without Celeste. You have room
for her, no?”
“We'll manage somehow," said Peggy, feeling rather flat.
“Of course we haven't the old staff of servants. We've had a
depression in this country, you know.”
“Oh, the depression," said Lily, in a tragic voice. “Do I not
know! Has it not brought Charles back to see about his invest-
ments? And now a war! What a world, and my poor France"
“You're still an American, Lily.”
Lily shrugged her shoulders and a magnificent silver fox cape
at the same time.
"In my trouble France gave me sanctuary. Why blame me if
it is my spiritual home?"
Peggy let that go. After all, Lily's trouble had been of her
own choosing, and it had apparently not destroyed her. It was
while they waited for a taxi that she got her first glimpse of
underneath currents. Lily, glancing at the taxi, said it did not
look safe to her, and Charles practically shoved her toward it.
“Don't be an idiot, Lily,” he said, sounding precisely like a
husband. “Get in and take that goddam dog. Why on earth you
had to bring it—"
Lily got in. Peggy had a glimpse of her face, and it rather
startled her; for Lily looked different. She looked almost fright-
ened. But she smiled delicately.
“My poor Charles,” she said. “I am such a worry to you, am
I not?"
She gave him a long glance from under lashes which might
or might not be natural. Charles merely grunted. He got in
beside Peggy and drew a long breath.
"God," he said, “I'm glad to be back. How are you anyhow?
And Paul, and Evalyn? Growing up, Evalyn, eh?”
“She's seventeen, and she's home from school, Charles.
Measles.”
"I see,” he said, and was silent for some time. Indeed, they


226
FAMILIAR FACES
were almost at the railroad station when he spoke again. "I
wouldn't worry,” he told her. “I'm staying in town, you know.
Paul going duck-shooting this fall?”
But Lily was very silent on the way home. She had lapsed
into unhappy thought, and once she shivered.
“I didn't want to come, Peg," she said. “I suppose the family
is raising hell.”
“They'll be all right. They're coming to dinner soon. After
all, Lily, it's really a marriage. They—"
"It is not a marriage," said Lily firmly.
She meant it. It took only an hour or two after their arrival
for Peggy to discover that devastating fact. Lily, in plain words,
was holding hard both to her martyrdom and to her romance.
In Europe this had been possible, and even more so. There a
woman who had sacrified everything for love was understood,
pitied and even cherished. But there was more to it than that.
Paul put his finger on it that night when he was getting ready
for bed.
"Well, look at her side of it,” he said reasonably. “She's had to
keep the thing on a level of romance for fifteen years. She can't
let it slip, or Charles either. You'd better tell Evalyn not to
call him Uncle Charles, too. It reduces the situation to the level
of a marriage."
“Reduces it?"
"Her point of view," he said matter-of-factly. “What's she
got but his chivalry and maybe years of habit? She's not young.
She's gone hungry a good many times to keep that figure. And
she's pretty damned pathetic, if you ask me. She's got to let
Charles feel free and still keep a strangle hold on him. Once
we make him feel like a husband it may be all off, and she
knows it.”
"I don't believe it,” said Peggy feebly. “She gave up every-
thing for him. He must realize that."


LILY COMES HOME AT LAST 227
“She's had to make him think so anyhow," said Paul, and
went calmly to bed and to sleep.
Men, she thought resentfully. They stuck together through
everything. Here was Charles, looking sleek and contented and
getting a paunch; and poor Lily making a fight to hold him.
It had been a fight. She realized it during the next day or two.
Lily, seen without her veil, had obviously had her face lifted.
Her eyes had an unmistakable tilt at the outer corners. But her
throat was not good, and so she wore a black velvet band
around it, or in the evening a strip of tulle.
Those first few days had a nightmarish quality to Peggy. It
was not only Celeste, who spoke no English, nor Lily's diet,
which consisted of practically nothing, or even Fifi the dog,
who regarded the carpets as something more than mere floor
coverings. Lily definitely was not happy. She missed Paris and
her life there. The quiet of a suburban house bored her. But it
was more than that. Peggy decided that she was worrying about
Charles. And after his first visit—he came with Paul for dinner
-Peggy herself felt uneasy. He was so glad to be back in
America. Being given to clichés, he called it God's country.
Also the rising stock market had cheered him.
“It's pretty good, too,” he said, “to go to sleep without worry-
ing about bombs.”
“There are other bombs than those from the air,” said Lily
dryly.
But Charles only looked puzzled.
It was about that time that Lily mentioned Millicent.
"What's she like, Peggy?" she asked.
"I've seen her once or twice. She hasn't changed a lot.”
“Why should she? She hasn't had a man to hold. It is not
easy to hold a man, Peggy, although Charles has been won-
derful. But after all he is a man, and I am not getting any
younger."


228
FAMILIAR FACES
That was the nearest they came to any real confidence. Peggy,
from her safe domesticity, tried hard to understand the situ-
ation. She remembered the Lily, honest and lovely and des
perate, who had told her she was going away with Charles.
“Millicent won't divorce him now,” she said. “But after that
she must. And I cannot live without him, Peggy. I cannot. I
cannot.”
Well, she had not. Only Millicent had spitefully refused the
divorce, and that was that. ...
On the surface, of course, everything was normal enough.
Once or twice a week Charles came out for dinner, looking very
nice in his evening clothes. After dinner they would play bridge,
and Lily would be arch with him about his evenings alone.
“You find some pretty lady in town?" she would say, going
very French again. “Voilà! I shall perhaps find some handsome
man. Then what will you do?"
"I'm bidding two spades,” Charles would say firmly. “And
I wish to God you would watch my discards."
Peggy, observing this byplay, would reflect that it was cer-
tainly exactly like a marriage; and also that under all Lily's
absurdity there was both fear and heroism. She was indeed
frightened. She would spend hours dressing before Charles
came, only to find him matter-of-fact and rather detached, and
to go upstairs, pale under her make-up, after he had gone.
Charles was certainly detached. He was picking up his life
where he had left it years ago; seeing at his club old friends
who either chose to ignore his story or had forgotten it. They
greeted him warmly.
“Upon my soul, where did you come from? How about a
drink?"
It warmed him. It was return from exile. Perhaps he even
wondered what wild impulse had made him leave an ordered
existence—and Millicent, of course—for fifteen years of the
Paris edition of the Herald and the French imitation of a cock-


LILY COMES HOME AT LAST 229
tail. Certainly he showed no immediate desire to leave America.
One evening at dinner he said:
"How about some duck-shooting later on, Paul ?"
“Surest thing you know."
Lily said nothing but Peggy thought she would, had it been
possible under her make-up, have looked a little pale.
Perhaps Evalyn was the greatest problem at that time. She
hung around Lily with wide-eyed interest and curiosity.
“Such clothes, mother,” she would say. “And such under-
wear, all chiffon and handmade. And just imagine! Celeste
massages her every day to keep her figure.” She eyed Peggy
with some disapproval. “You are a little overweight, aren't you,
mother?”
Peggy kept her temper. She had to do a good bit of that now-
adays, what with Lily's diet, and Celeste by the mere raising
of her eyebrows—which were heavy and black-managing to
reduce the servants to the level of the kitchen linoleum.
"I'm the way I was made,” she said and let it go at that.
But Evalyn was more than curious about Lily. She had be
come her violent advocate, and Peggy wondered drearily what
harm it was doing. One day she came in to say furiously that
Charles had not called Lily for two days.
"He's an old pig," she said. “I don't know why she sticks to
him. After all, she doesn't have to."
“Really, Evalyn. I can't talk about it,” said Peggy, driven to
desperation. “We have to take people as they are, and your
Aunt Lily has suffered a great tragedy. Try to remember that.”
The net result of which was that Evalyn, to Celeste's disgust,
insisted for several days on carrying Lily's trays to her bed.
Lily, it seemed, required a great deal of rest in bed. As a matter
of fact, there was not much else for her to do. Suburban society,
having a long memory for scandal, had immediately divided
itself, like Caesar's Gaul, into three parts: those who called out
of curiosity, those who refused to call at all, and Evalyn's young


230
FAMILIAR FACES
crowd who, so to speak, rallied round the flag and espoused
Lily's cause with enthusiasm. Peggy heard her one day on the
terrace, with a group of these moderns.
"Life is not a simple thing,” she was saying. "You will find
it so, and to make a mistake once is to make it forever. How
well I know!"
Peggy, who was rubbing a spot on the piano where the Eld-
ridge boy had left a cigarette to burn to the bitter end, found
herself clutching the rag and going cold all over.
“But of course,” Lily went on, “I was very young. Very young
and lonely and sad.”
Peggy looked out. Lily was in white, looking frail and help
less, and surrounded by young sympathetic faces; and, as she
watched, the Eldridge boy got up with an air of protection and
put a pillow behind her back.
"Pretty tough luck,” he said. “You must have been just a
kid.”
Lily said nothing. She lay back against the pillow and closed
her eyes, and Peggy had a sudden violent desire to go out and
smack her.
Nevertheless, as time went on Peggy was uneasy. Charles's
detachment was apparently increasing. On the nights he came
out to dinner he emerged from his man's world in the city to
look at Lily as though he did not even see her.
"Please, Charles, I am not the wallpaper."
"Sorry,” he would mumble. “I was thinking of something
else.”
The simile, of course, was unfortunate, since Charles might-
had he been more clever-have realized that no wallpaper was
ever more adherent than Lily.
Peggy was increasingly anxious.
“What's the matter with him, Paul?” she inquired one night
after he had gone.
“Nothing,” said Paul calmly. “He can't be a great lover all


LILY COMES HOME AT LAST 231
his life. Nobody can. He may yearn for his own fireside too,
and a pair of bedroom slippers. A man of his age wants a
home.”
"Paul!” said Lily, aghast. "I wonder if he's been seeing
Millicent!”
"How do I know? After all, why shouldn't he?”
Which, of course, was unanswerable.
Meanwhile the day of the family dinner party was approach-
ing. Lily, delicately approached on the subject, agreed to wear
a black gown and to leave off most of her jewels. She seemed
to find the situation amusing.
"I shall be a figure of grief and repentance," she promised.
“But remember this, Peggy. In their eyes I am a sinful woman.
To myself—and Charles-I am the victim of Millicent's spite
and nothing else. I am not ashamed.”
There was, however, a change going on in Lily. Little by
little she was less foreign, even less defiant. She was less
artificial too. There were fewer long staccato hours with Celeste,
and one day to that young Frenchwoman's horror she bor-
rowed a pair of slacks from Evalyn, put on a pair of tennis
sneakers, and actually went out for a walk. Paul on his way
home saw her. She was limping rather badly, but she looked
extremely pleased with herself.
There were other changes too. One day she went back to the
kitchen-the cook was out-and prepared the dinner. It was
very good indeed, and Paul grinned at her.
“I suspect you,” he said, "of being secretly domestic, Lily.”
"But I am domestic,” she said, surprised.
After that Lily's cooking and her daily walk became a part of
her new regime, and soon after the false eyelashes disappeared
-except when Charles was coming, of course. But Charles was
not coming very often. Peggy, watching Lily after she had
called him on the telephone, once or twice surprised a look of
quiet desperation on her face; and on the morning of the din-


232
FAMILIAR FACES
ner party she announced suddenly that she was going into
town.
It was four o'clock when she came back. She went quietly
upstairs into her room and locked the door. Celeste, rapping
repeatedly, got no reply and finally went sulkily away. And
Evalyn, carrying her a cup of tea at six o'clock, came away
looking startled.
"I think she's crying, mother,” she said. “What do you sup-
pose is the matter?”
But Peggy was worn out, what with wondering how to assas-
sinate Charles without unpleasant consequences, and worrying
about the cheese soufflé that night. All she could think of was
that a red-eyed Lily in a modest black dress would at least
satisfy the family's sense of what was fitting.
“She'll probably snap out of it,” she said. “Now let me alone.
I've got enough worries of my own.”
She had, as it happened. The family gathered, prompt to the
hour. There were a round dozen of them, middle-aged and
elderly, and Aunt Clara wore her old plum-colored silk with
long sleeves and a high neck, as well as an expression of ram-
pant virtue. Peggy, eying them hopelessly while they waited
for Lily, thought they were rather like a coroner's jury waiting
to view the corpse.
“I see she hasn't changed,” said Aunt Clara tartly, and looked
at her watch. “She was always late.”
Then Lily came, and Peggy closed her eyes and reached
blindly for a cocktail. For here was no repentant figure clad, so
to speak, in sackcloth and ashes. Here was a Lily, head high
and defiant, in a glittering gold dress which had a little front
above the waist and practically no back. Also a Lily who
sparkled with jewels, Charles's jewels beyond a doubt.
Aunt Clara gave her a long look and did not offer to shake
hands.


LILY COMES HOME AT LAST 233
“Well, Lily,” she said coldly, "you look as if your life has
been at least prosperous.”
It was all really dreadful, for after the greetings Peggy saw
all the women of the family moving together, rather like sheep
when a strange dog enters the field, and bleating in a corner.
Only Evalyn, who had insisted on being present, stood vali-
antly beside Lily. Nor was the dinner any better, although the
cheese soufflé was highly successful.
Everybody talked feverishly, but there was no keeping the
eye away from Lily. In that decorous group she stood out like
a sore thumb, and she was behaving badly too; laughing a great
deal and making considerable play with those terrible eye-
lashes of hers. Peggy knew it was an act, a wretched bit of
defiance and resentment, but that did not help. And toward the
end of the meal Lily really outdid herself. Old Uncle Thomas,
stone-deaf and practically a recluse, spoke to Lily across the
table.
“I hear you've just come from France," he said. "Tell that
husband of yours I'd like to talk to him.”
And then Lily smiled.
“But Charles is not my husband,” she said loudly and clearly.
Uncle Thomas looked astounded.
“Good God!” he mumbled, “I thought you'd married the
fellow," and lapsed into silence.
It was then that Aunt Clara left the table. She simply got
up and departed, with an apologetic Uncle James in her train;
but Uncle James was at least a human being. He stopped by
Lily's chair and patted her bare shoulder.
"Don't mind Clara,” he said. “She'll get over it. No fault of
yours, this business.”
And for the first time that night Lily's face lost its defiance.
Naturally the party broke up early. Lily disappeared, and as
Paul said, he could now look around without blinking. But


LILY COMES HOME AT LAST 235
Nor was Paul much help that night.
“What happened to her?” he asked. “Charles been cutting
up, or what? If you ask me, she looked pretty sick."
Lily apologized the next day. She lay in her bed, wan and
listless, and told Peggy she was sorry. “I was upset,” she said.
“I'm dreadfully sorry. I-it just seemed a good idea at the
time.”
But she did not get up that day, or for several days there-
after. She did not eat, and Peggy suspected that she did not
sleep. Charles was in Washington on business—something
about the income tax-and Paul was playing in a golf tourna-
ment and even more remote than Charles. On the third day
Peggy called the family doctor, and he came out of Lily's room
looking puzzled.
"It's hard to say what's wrong, Peggy,” he said. “She hasn't
had a blow of any sort? Trouble, I mean?”.
"She's had plenty. I don't know of anything new."
“She's in a curious state of mind. No will to live, apparently.
In fact, she as much as said so.”
Probably he knew Lily's story. Everybody did, seemingly.
But he did not refer to it. He ordered something to enable her
to sleep and went away. When Peggy went in she was lying
back on her pillows with her eyes closed, and Peggy was con-
scious of a sharp pang of pity.
"Lily, darling,” she said, “is there anything I can do? Shall I
wire Charles?”
“I don't want to see him. Not like this.”
“He doesn't love you for the way you look,” said Peggy
stanchly.
But Lily merely closed her eyes again.
“You've been good to me,” she said. “All of you. I am afraid
I had forgotten how it would be. Thank you, Peggy."
And it was then that Peggy made her great mistake. She left
IS CO


LILY COMES HOME AT LAST
237
Uc
an intern arrived from the hospital with some sort of apparatus.
He took the stairs three at a time, kicked at Fifi when she tried
to bite him, and also disappeared. Then Paul arrived, and
Peggy went into his arms and cried her heart out on his
shoulder.
He tried to comfort her.
"It will be all right, darling,” he said. "She's pretty tough
material.” This not sounding very delicate, he added, “She's
strong, you know.”
“She's had to be," said Peggy viciously, and wept again.
It was hours later when the doctor came out, putting on his
coat and smiling.
“Well, we've done it,” he said cheerfully. “Been a messy job,
but she'll be all right. What in the world made her do a thing
like that?"
“She wasn't very happy,” said Peggy dully.
He patted her on the arm.
“I imagine she's had her share of it,” he said. “After all, there
is only so much happiness in the world. We have to take what
we can get.”
Well, maybe that was it, she thought dully, sitting on the
top step of the stair. Lily had had her bit, and now she was
paying for it. Whatever Charles had done, it was a part of that
price.
She sat very still, and after a while Fifi crawled into her lap.
She was shivering, and Peggy held her. A dog was company,
she thought. Maybe Lily had found Fifi so. There must have
been many times even in France—when she had been lonely.
Times when her masseur and her dressmaker and her beauty
parlor had done their best for her, and Charles was off some-
where drinking his French imitation of a cocktail, or even with
her and reading the Paris edition of the Herald.
Sometime during that quiet interval she saw Evalyn. The


238
FAMILIAR FACES
girl's eyes were red and she looked dazed, as though her cock-
sure young world had crumbled under her feet.
“I suppose it wasn't worth it, after all,” she said tremulously.
"No," said Peggy quietly. “I don't suppose it ever is.”
The nurse let her in the sickroom that afternoon. At first
she hardly recognized Lily. The eyelashes were gone, her hair
was brushed back cruelly from her face, and that face had had
what was probably its first good soap-and-water wash in years.
She was very pale, but oddly enough she looked quite beauti-
ful. Not young, Peggy thought. Just her age, and lovely. But
habit was strong in Lily.
“I must look dreadful, Peggy,” she said. “Don't let anyone
see me.”
“You look better than I've ever seen you,” said Peggy bluntly.
“I've put you to a lot of trouble.”
“Never mind about that. Lily, what on earth made you do a
thing like that?”
Lily lay very still. The nurse had gone out and Fifi was
whimpering beside the bed.
"It's been plain hell,” she said in a flat voice. "Always being
afraid. And then when we came back, and everybody tried to
make him feel like a husband, The French knew better, you
see. It was always a romance to them.”
“That's plain idiocy, Lily.”
"Is it? Then why is he seeing Millicent?”
“Millicent? I don't believe it.”
"I saw them together,” said Lily, still in that lifeless voice.
"And he's conventional, Peggy. He doesn't like the way things
are. He never did. He was wonderful to me, but I knew. Then
when we came back and the family all rallied round, it let
him out. So I've lost him.”
Peggy was speechless, lost in a topsy-turvy world where doing
the right thing was apparently doing exactly the opposite. And


LILY COMES HOME AT LAST 239
Lily went on. She had gone into town to have her hair done,
and in a restaurant she had found Charles and Millicent lunch-
ing together. They were even laughing, and Millicent looked
very handsome and triumphant.
“So then I knew,” said Lily....
Charles came back from Washington that evening, and
Peggy called him at his club. He was at dinner, they said, and
she sat, shaking with fury, while they brought him to the
phone. She could picture him, eating a substantial meal, look-
ing big and strong and thinking about his income tax or about
going duck-shooting, and the picture almost choked her. Never-
theless, she controlled her voice to an icy calmness when she
got him.
"I thought you might like to know,” she said, “that Lily tried
to kill herself last night.”
“Lily!” he said, astounded. “I don't believe it. She isn't that
sort."
“How do you know what sort she is??"
There was a silence. Charles seemed to be gathering himself
together.
"But—why?” he said thickly. "I thought, How is she now?”
“Better. But she doesn't want to see you."
He hung up on that. Not like an angry man. He merely
hung up the receiver, and an hour later he confronted her in
her own living room. He looked shocked, but mostly he looked
bewildered.
“What's all this nonsense?” he demanded.
"You can call it nonsense if you like. They barely saved her.”
She saw then that he looked old, old and tired, but she did
not care. Let him look old. Let him go up and look at Lily and
then jump off a bridge. Let him— Then Paul came in, matter-
of-fact as ever, and once again she hated this solidarity of men
where women were concerned. All Paul said, however, was:


LILY COMES HOME AT LAST
241
simpler when she doesn't have to fight to hold him. She must
be pretty tired of it.”
Peggy was silent. Then she stirred uneasily.
“Maybe I'd better tell you something,” she said. “I don't
believe she really meant to kill herself.”
“Neither does Charles. He knows her, my dear. But he's
pretty fond of her at that, and she might have taken too much.”
She sat very still. It was wonderful to feel the house quiet
about her, and to know that Lily would soon be gone. She was
not young enough for so many emotions. They wearied her.
After all, she had her own life, and she had Paul. Or had she?
She looked across at him.
“I suppose you do love me,” she said tentatively. “When you
think about it, of course.”
Paul stared at her.
“For heaven's sake!” he said. “Has Lily done that to you?
What in God's name do you suppose I stick around for?”
“I just wondered,” she said meekly, and put her head on his
shoulder.
Here was the world she knew, a world of order and quiet
happiness, a law-abiding world where there were no great
heights but also no depths of despair. Under her head Paul's
shoulder had the familiar man-smell of tweed and tobacco and
-very faintly-of hair tonic. She felt his arm around her,
strong and possessive, and she closed her eyes.
She was utterly content.


IX
Dorothy Dresses for Dinner





OROTHY was making up her eyebrows at the
small cabin mirror. She was clad only in step-ins
and a brassière, and she looked absurdly child-
ish. Donald, standing in a corner out of the way and waiting
for a chance to finish dressing, wondered again how, at thirty-
five, she still managed that look of youth.
"If you'll let me tie this tie I'll get out of your way," he said
mildly.
Dorothy did not answer. She was busy dabbing the small
brush in the mascara, and just as she applied it the ship rolled
rather heavily. The result was grotesque and she wailed.
"I do wish you wouldn't hurry me,” she said. “Look at that.
I'll have to start all over again.” And with a grievance that had
lasted ever since they sailed: “This rotten little boat. If anybody
had told me I'd ever travel on a tub like this—”.
“We had to get home, my dear," he said, keeping down his
annoyance. “I still have a business, you know."
“If you call it that! For the past ten years you've been saying
it was dead, or dying. Anyhow, what difference would a few
days make? Look at this cabin."
"I am looking.”
“That sounds like a nasty crack.”
“Well, let me tie my tie and I'll get out of your way.”
But Dorothy had begun on her lashes now, and was com-
pletely absorbed. He stood in his corner and surveyed the cabin.
It was littered with Dorothy's possessions. Moreover, it was
close. At dusk the room steward had closed the porthole, which
was painted with thick black paint, and warned them not to
open it. Now the air was heavy with perfumed soap and
245


246
FAMILIAR FACES
powder, lifeless and hot. He could feel his collar wilting, and
suddenly his hands began to clench again. Good God, he had
thought that was over. He had not had it for weeks.
"Listen,” he said. “Let me get out and you can take all the
time you want. Although I'm damned if I see why you worry.
This is wartime. You don't have to impress anybody.”
“I'll be through in a minute.”
But she was not through. She tried to powder her face, but it
was covered with small beads of perspiration. She made one or
two futile attempts, and then burst into tears.
"All right. You win,” she said sulkily. “Although I don't see
why we can't open that window and get some air in here."
"A submarine is a pretty good reason.”
“That's ridiculous. Are we to smother all the way across the
Atlantic?”
"There are worse things."
She said nothing, and he glanced at her in the mirror. She
was sitting on the edge of the lower berth, and he saw on her
face the secret look that he had learned to know so well through
the years of their marriage. It usually meant very little; an ex-
travagant day's shopping, or a considerable loss at bridge. Now,
however, he was, all at once, suspicious.
“See here,” he said. “Don't you open that porthole when I'm
gone.”
“Don't be an idiot. Who wants to open the thing? Just get
out. That's all I ask.”
Outside the cabin in the cooler air he felt better. He was even
rather ashamed of his resentment. Dorothy was Dorothy, living
her small frivolous life, constantly preoccupied with her face
and body, and ignoring everything that did not touch her per-
sonally. But she had been faithful. He thought she probably
loved him, after her fashion. And he wondered if, after all, he
was not making her a sort of whipping boy, to be blamed and
punished for the past ten years of strain.


248
FAMILIAR FACES
pretty. Her hair was freshly waved and she was wearing a new
hostess gown which looked expensive. She stared at him in-
credulously.
“Alone?” she said. “Are you joking?”
"It was the doctor's idea. Not mine."
"But what's the matter with you? You look all right to me.”
He had felt himself stiffening again. There was even a cramp
in the muscle of his legs.
“Nothing that can't be cured,” he said gently. “I suppose it's
nerves. At least he said so.”
"Oh, nerves,” said Dorothy. “What do you men know about
nerves? I'm a bundle of nerves myself, but I don't pay twenty-
five dollars to be told about it.”
In the end she had gone to Europe with him, and now here
they were on the way home, shooting through the black night
on a black ship, with danger all about them and Dorothy cry-
ing because her powder stuck to her hot face.
And he was no better. If he had gone alone-but why think
of that? He would go back and maybe business would improve,
with war orders coming in and so on.
He moved along toward the deck, a tall youngish man in
dinner clothes, with a tired droop to his shoulders. The passages
were dark and deserted, the ship dimly lit. Many of the lamps
had been hastily daubed with blue paint, and to get outside he
had to go through double doors, a sort of dark vestibule to
prevent the escape of any betraying light.
It gave him a new sense of danger, the dark deck, bare of
passengers. At first he thought he was alone. Then he became
aware of men stationed here and there. They were silent, im-
movable, but when he automatically reached for a cigarette he
found one of them at his elbow.
"No smoking out here, sir. Captain's orders."
“Of course. I forgot. Sorry."


DOROTHY DRESSES FOR DINNER 249
He leaned against the rail, and with that reality of danger his
last resentment died. He hoped to God he could get her home
safely, to her small preoccupations, her harmless gaieties. Sud-
denly he was overwhelmed with responsibility for her. Whether
he loved her or not-and this he did not ask himself—she was
his to be protected.
He was still there, some time later, when he heard a small
voice at his elbow.
"It's kinda funny, isn't it?" it said. “All dark like this.”
He looked down. It was the Williams boy, in a bathrobe over
diminutive pajamas, his face a small white spot in the dark. He
was not a particularly attractive child. Dorothy had called him
a darned nuisance. But here on the dark deck he seemed small
and defenseless. He reached down and put a hand on his
shoulder.
“Not frightened, are you, Bobbie?” he said. “We're all right,
you know. Better go to bed and just forget about it.”
"I was in bed. I got scared.”
"Where's Mother?”.
"She's gone to dinner. I don't like the dark.”
"Well, suppose I take you down and tuck you in. We'll leave
the door open. That all right?".
They went down together. He held the child's hand, warm
and confiding, and something in the contact pleased him. He
felt strong compared with this weakness and dependence, and
as he put the boy in his berth and drew up the covers he won-
dered what life would have been if he and Dorothy had had
children. He pushed that aside, but the small interlude had
helped him. He was fairly cheerful as he started for his own
cabin again.
To his surprise the door was locked. He knocked, and Dor-
othy's voice answered sharply.
"Who is it?"


250
FAMILIAR FACES
"Aren't you ready? We're pretty late."
"In a minute,” she said.
He stood waiting. Through the thin partition he heard her
snap out the light. Then she emerged, rather hurriedly, and
closed and locked the door behind her.
“I'm sorry,” she said breathlessly. “Everything went wrong.
I suppose I look dreadful. Have we time for a cocktail ?”
"You look very nice," he told her, mindful of his new re-
solve. “It took some time, but it was worth it."
That pleased her. She smiled up at him, and he wondered if,
after all, she had not been rather afraid of him lately. He put an
arm around her.
"Sorry I worried you, darling. I'll try to do better."
“Do you like this dress?"
"Fine,” he said. And for lack of more to say, "Fine," he
repeated.
But she was not quite herself. She was uneasy about some-
thing. Even in the bar, at a table under some palms in tubs, she
kept looking about her; and she asked for a second cocktail.
“I'm upset,” she explained feverishly. “I had to hurry. Then
the heat was dreadful and—” She stopped. “Listen, Don," she
said, “I don't suppose the steward will go into that cabin while
we're out, will he? I left everything lying around.”
"He may. He has a key. But I wouldn't worry. He's probably
used to women who forget to put things away.”
She looked frightened.
"I'd better go down,” she said, and got up. Then she sat down
suddenly, staring at the doorway. Their room steward was
standing there, and with him was a ship's officer. As Donald
looked, they started toward his table.
They never reached it.
From somewhere below came a terrific explosion. The ship
rocked, and a palm tree in its tub slid a few feet and then turned
as


252
FAMILIAR FACES
"Don't be silly. There are plenty of boats.”
But he knew and Joe knew that there would not be time to
launch all the boats. The ship was going down rapidly. He saw
Dorothy safely away and then stood back. She was dazed but
conscious.
“Keep your chin up,” he called to her. “They've radioed for
help.”
At the last minute he tossed her his coat. Unlike most of the
women, her neck and arms were bare. He saw that she got it,
and then stood back from the rail. She would be safe, he knew.
For himself he had no hope whatever, only the desire to meet
what was coming like a man. At least, thank God, most of the
women and children had gone. One boat had overturned, but
it was righted now and picking up the survivors.
He was with the remaining men on the top deck when the
ship went down. It went quickly, sliding out from under him at
first, and then reaching up and clutching at him. It was some
time before it let go. When it did he shot to the surface, and
for a long while was content merely to breathe. He lay on his
back and filled his lungs, over and over again. Then he turned
and began to swim. He swam almost idly, conserving his
strength; and at first without conscious thought. Then little by
little, the chaos in his mind subsided. All of this was connected.
There was an inevitable cause and an inevitable result. He was
there because of that cause, whatever it was. But it lay just
around the corner of his mind and for a long time it escaped
him.
Then suddenly he knew, and the knowledge almost drowned
him. Once more he felt that old spasm of the muscles, the
clenched hands and stiffening legs. He tried to relax, but it held
him in its grip, leaving him helpless. Afterward he thought that
it might not have passed at all had he not heard something in
the water near him. It was splashing and whimpering, making
small puppylike noises, and he realized then that it was a child.


DOROTHY DRESSES FOR DINNER 253
Va
That saved him. He relaxed and swam toward the child,
catching it and holding it.
"It's all right,” he said. “I've got you. Take it easy."
But the child said nothing. It kept on, making its small des-
perate struggle, and he realized that it was barely conscious.
Then suddenly it collapsed, an inert bit of wreckage in a dark
sea.
It was some time before he knew that it was the Williams
boy.
He began to tire. Now and then, holding the child, he turned
and floated, to rest. And every so often he shouted, without
result. He was about exhausted when he found a floating barrel
and eased the boy onto it.
It was toward dawn when the rescue ship appeared. At first
it was only a faint star, low on the horizon. Then it loomed out
of the darkness and the people in the boats cheered, their voices
thin and strained. Here once more was safety; safety and home
and a door to the future. They stood up and waved, their tired
eyes shining
When the rescuers picked Donald up his hands were clenched
tight to the sides of the barrel. He had some trouble in let-
ting go.
"Get the boy," he said thickly. “I'm all right.”
They carried him on board, and he slept all that day. He was
feverish and restless. Now and then he roused when a portly
ship's doctor in a blue uniform stood over him. But he was not
fully conscious until night. Then he opened his eyes and stared
around him. At first he thought there had been no tragedy, no
night in the water, no child lying unconscious in his arms; that
he was back in his berth on the other ship, the curtains swaying
lightly to its rolling and somewhere below the engines beating
steadily, like the pulsation of a heart.
Nothing had changed, for even Dorothy was there, in step-ins
and a brassière, standing in front of the small mirror and rub-


254
FAMILIAR FACES
bing cold cream into the corners of her mouth with the usual
intentness.
But it had not been a dream. The evening dress she had worn
the night before was hanging up, stained and dirty. As the ship
rolled, it swung out and then swung back again. And Dorothy
herself had changed. The youth had gone out of her face. In the
mirror it looked old, old and tired and frightened.
He moved, trying to raise himself, and she turned with a
start, letting the cold cream drop. .
“Oh, you're awake,” she said. “I tried to be quiet.”
She looked uneasy when he did not reply.
“How do you feel?” she asked. “The doctor gave you some-
thing to make you sleep. He says you only need rest. You have
a little fever.”
"I'm all right.”
“Can I get you anything?”.
"No, thanks.”
She hesitated.
“I'll have to sleep in here. On the couch. The ship's crowded.”
“That's all right. Why not?”
She went very white, but there was no pity in him. She
opened her mouth to speak, seemed unable to, and turned away.
When he looked at her again she was back at the mirror, rub-
bing away at her raddled face; and suddenly he found himself
laughing, horrible silent laughter that tore at his sore muscles
and left him exhausted. It was funny. Oh, God, it was funny.
He slept after that, but his fever had risen and his sleep was
broken with dreams. One of them was horrible. He was in the
open sea again, only it was not the boy who was with him. It
was Dorothy, but he was not trying to save her. He was push-
ing her down into the water and strangling her, only his hands
kept slipping on her wet neck.
Then a wave washed him away from her, and Dorothy was
sitting up on the couch, saying thickly:


DOROTHY DRESSES FOR DINNER 255
"I suppose you've wanted to do that for a long time.”
It was not a dream. He was there, on his feet, and Dorothy
was holding her throat and staring at him. He held out his
hands and looked at them. They were shiny with perfumed
grease.
"I think,” she said slowly, “that you have wanted to kill me
for years."
“I'm sorry. I was dreaming."
He began to shake. He sat down on the edge of his berth and
held his head in both hands. But Dorothy's voice went on,
quietly, steadily.
“You must have, to dream about it.”
"I wasn't dreaming about it,” he began, and then stopped.
He could never explain to her what he was afraid to explain to
himself. If she would only stop talking, let him alone, let him
sleep again. But Dorothy was looking at him; not accusing him.
Just watching him.
"I suppose you know,” she said finally.
“Yes,” he said. “I know."
She was silent for a moment.
"I was so hot. And it was such a little thing."
"It sank a ship. God only knows how many people it killed.
Have you thought of that?" His voice shook. “Why in God's
name did you do it? Why?”
She sat very still.
“You wouldn't understand,” she said slowly. "You see, I
haven't very much. I'm not intelligent. I'm not even young.
And I've always cared more than you did.”
“What's that got to do with it?” he demanded harshly.
She gave him a faint timid smile.
“I've always been afraid of losing you, Don,” she said simply.
He gazed at her in stupefaction. His mind, confused with
fever, could not grasp it, unless she was shrewdly putting the
blame on him. But she was not doing that. She was going


256
FAMILIAR FACES
down into her own mind, opening it, telling him the truth
at last.
"It was hot, and I couldn't fix my face," she said. “So I
opened the porthole. And afterwards you said I looked nice.”
She tried to smile again. “You hadn't said that for a long time,
you know.” And she added, as though still patiently explaining,
“You see, you had your business. I only had my looks, so I've
tried to hold them. I thought maybe I could hold you if I did.”
He continued to stare at her. It was not possible that for such
a reason strong men went down to the sea in ships, and small
boys paddled whimpering like drowning puppies in a great
ocean. Or that he himself should try, even in sleep, to kill. But
her face alarmed him. All the life had gone out of it.
"Why didn't you tell me?” he said more gently. “Things
between us might have been different.”
She shook her head.
"They could never have been different,” she said. "I know
that now.” And she added, with a touch of her occasional
acumen, “It's queer, when you think about it. Men marry
women because they are what they are. Then later on they want
them to be something entirely different. I wasn't smart enough
to change."
He had no reply to that. He felt exhausted. His head was
aching, his pulse racing. He lay back in the berth and closed
his eyes. She was right, of course. He had married her for the
childishness that was her charm, and she had never grown
up. Even last night had not changed her. She would forget
that. He could see her when they got home, dramatizing her-
self, the explosion, the night in the boat, the rescue at dawn.
Looking small and helpless, and arousing pity. Pity! Good God.
He felt very tired, unequal to further discussion. The opiate
was taking effect too, and it was from a far distance that he
heard her draw a long breath.


DOROTHY DRESSES FOR DINNER 257
“Well, I've told you,” she said. “You knew it anyhow. But I'll
not bother you any more, Donald. It's all over."
When he wakened it was full day. Bright sunshine was
streaming through the open porthole. His clothing, shrunken
but freshly pressed, was laid out on the couch, and there was no
sign of Dorothy. His watch was on the table, but of course it
had stopped. He rang for the steward, to learn that it was ten
o'clock.
“Have you seen my wife?” he asked.
"No, sir. She was gone when I brought your clothes an hour
or so ago."
Still he was not uneasy. The fever had gone, and the events
of the night before took on a nightmarish unreality. He got up
and began to dress. Dorothy's jar of cold cream, obtained by
some alchemy of her own, was still in the rack above the wash
basin, but her clothes were gone. And suddenly he began to
worry. What had she meant when she said, “I'll not bother you
any more ... it's all over"? What was all over? Surely-
He finished his dressing in frantic haste, his hands shaking,
his heart pumping wildly. What had she done, in that new
despair of hers? And all at once he saw her, dropping over the
rail; the ship going on and Dorothy paddling in the empty sea,
paddling and whimpering. He broke out into a cold sweat. But
of course it was not possible. She was not that sort. He would
find her somewhere on the deck, with a crowd of sympathizers
around her, telling again and again of the tragedy.
“We were in the bar,” she would be saying. “I remember the
most awful noise, and then I fainted. My husband had to carry
me to the boat.”
But she was not on the deck when he reached it. He searched
in growing desperation. Now and then he saw somebody he
knew, and tried to be calm.
“I suppose you haven't seen my wife?”


258
FAMILIAR FACES
"No, I haven't. She's probably around somewhere."
But during that frenzied period he learned something that
only added to the irony and anguish of his situation. It was
the general opinion that they had struck a mine, that there had
been no submarine, no torpedo. The night had been clear, and
a torpedo leaves a white wake. No one had seen any. He stood
still and realized that in all probability Dorothy had killed no
body, unless perhaps herself. And now he was sure that she had
done it.
“I'll not bother you any more, Donald. It's all over."
He gave up finally, standing and holding to the rail while
he stared out at the sea. He had killed her, as surely as if he
had strangled her the night before. And along with his guilt
came a wave of tenderness for her. She had been the eternal
child, and she had loved him. If only he could live the last
years over again, if only she had not taken that last desperate
step into the dark. A thousand memories came crowding, little
intimacies, familiar habits, even laughter. She had liked to
laugh.
He felt faint and sick. When he went below, the long pas
sage seemed endless. It rocked under his unsteady feet. He
passed doors, the barbershop, the gift shop, the beauty shop.
And outside of the last he stopped abruptly. The door was
open, and a familiar voice within was speaking.
“We were in the bar when it happened," it was saying. "I
remember the noise, and then I fainted. My husband had to
carry me to the boat."
He looked in. Dorothy, her hair carefully waved and netted,
was sitting under the drier, while a manicurist worked over
her nails. He turned away, and suddenly he was laughing. He
was still laughing hysterically when he reached the cabin and
threw himself face downward on the berth.


Mr. Caswell Looks Out the Window





262
FAMILIAR FACES
a way, the window was his escape from his thoughts, which
were not too cheerful.
“Don't you want to read, Bob?" Marian would say, looking
down at him with soft patient eyes.
“I like looking out.”
“But what is there to see, darling? Would you like to play
some Russian bank?"
“There's plenty to see. No, I don't want to play Russian
bank, or tiddlywinks, or anything else. Why don't you go to
bed and get some sleep? I'm all right.”
Marian would slip away, but before she went she would tidy
up the room; smooth the pillows on the couch, empty his ash
tray—“You're smoking too much, Bob”—and occasionally pour
some water on the Boston fern. Joe Masters, the superintendent
at the factory, had brought it the day after they found that
somebody had poured emery dust into some of the machinery
and stopped production for a week. Joe had carried it in and set
it down, much the way the doctor had given him some horrible
dose, and said smilingly, “You'll feel better after you have this."
Only Joe did not smile. Nor, as a matter of fact, did Mr.
Caswell.
"Thanks, Joe,” he said. “That's fine. Got any idea who
did it?"
By which he did not refer to the fern, which presumably
was the work of God. But Joe understood. He spread his big
hands. “Might be anybody," he said. “You don't know what
you've got these days. Get a Government order for defense
stuff and they're after you right off. Lot of fellows in this
country ought to be up against a firing squad this minute."
That was why on this particular night he sat glumly looking
out. The emery dust had been only the beginning. Only the
day before they had found a bomb in the plant. Joe had carried
it out into the yard and put it in a tub of water, but the men


MR. CASWELL LOOKS OUT 267
sick and tired of the whole business. He had saved a little. They
could manage somehow. Her
The telephone rang, and he picked it up. As he expected, it
was Joe again.
"More trouble?” he asked resignedly.
“Not here,” said Joe. “But get an earful of this, Mr. Caswell.
Mendel's wife's here. She's pretty scared, but she's talking
straight enough. She says there's a plan to take over the town!”
“She's crazy. What for?”
"That's what I asked her. She doesn't know. All she says is
that Mendel's crowd is all organized to do it, city hall, power
plants, police station houses the works.”
"And what will we be doing while all this goes on? Has she
got any ideas about that?”
There was a queer sound to Joe's voice when he replied.
"Well, where would we be, Mr. Caswell?” he said. “Suppose
such a thing does start. I haven't even got a gun. This state
makes it hard to own one.”
"Well, I've got one."
“I suppose you know where it is?”.
"I could find it,” said Mr. Caswell stiffly.
Joe laughed, not too pleasantly.
“That's the answer, isn't it? Only most of us haven't got any
guns."
He was angry when he hung up. Joe was off his head. He'd
believe anything. Nevertheless, the jibe about his gun rankled.
He got up on shaky legs and went back to Marian's room. She
was reading in bed, and she put down her book when she saw
him.
“Where's my automatic?” he said gruffly.
"Your automatic!” she said, surprised. “I don't know, Bob.
It may be back in your war trunk. Why on earth do you
want it?"


MR. CASWELL LOOKS OUT 269
But as he watched, the man with the pushcart left it and
moved into the light, and he gazed at him incredulously.
There was something familiar about the set of the shoulders,
the swagger of the walk. After a moment he picked up the
receiver and called the factory.
Joe answered at once.
“That you, Joe?"
“Yes.”
“Everything quiet?”
“Yes, sir. We've got some extra policemen around the place,
but there's no trouble. I think I'll go along home. The missus
will be worrying."
“See here, Joe. What about Mendel? Any idea where he is ?”
"Home in bed, for all I know."
“Well, if I didn't know better I'd say he's selling hot dogs
across the street here."
Joe laughed.
“Not Mendel,” he said. “You can bank on that. If you said
hot lead I'd agree with you. That reminds me— Found that
gun of yours yet?"
"I know where it is,” said Mr. Caswell, his voice cold.
"Well, don't shoot the hot-dog man,” said Joe cheerfully, and
hung up.
When he went back to the window he saw that the racket
below had wakened the old lady. Well, to hell with it. He
couldn't protect all the old ladies in town. He couldn't protect
anybody. He was through. Washed up. He couldn't even
get a decent night's sleep. What he needed, he thought, was
a good snifter of Scotch. Maybe it would help him forget a
Government that changed its specifications every week, and
sabotage, and the whole goddam business.
It took him some time to get to the dining room. The Scotch
revived him, however. He sipped it slowly, savoring it on his


270
FAMILIAR FACES
tongue while listening warily for Marian. After that he made
his way through the kitchen to the storeroom. He located his
gun easily. It was, as Marian had suggested, in his war trunk;
that brown tin box which contained his old uniform-smelling
to high heaven of moth balls—his boots, his Sam Browne belt,
and a neat arrangement in a khaki case of a knife, fork and
spoon which his grandmother had sent him when he went
to war twenty years ago. For some reason that amused him,
although his knees were shaking as he went to the living room,
automatic and a box of shells in his hands.
He sat down by the window and inspected it. The govern-
ment had charged him thirty-five dollars for it. It had cost him
six hundred dollars for his outfit to fight in the war, and while
he loaded the gun he wondered what had become of all the
stuff they had dumped as soon as they got to France: the port-
able bathtubs, for instance, the canvas washbasins, the collaps-
ible lanterns, all the rest of it that they had never seen again.
Well, that was the way things went. You never got what you
expected. You got wounded in a war that didn't settle any-
thing, you built up a business only to have it taxed to death,
and when you tried to save the country you got emery powder
in the machines, and bombs, and a fire. Someday they might
even get him and leave Marian alone. Like the old lady across
the street.
He looked out. It was one o'clock by that time, and traffic
had almost ceased. The old lady's light was still on. The din
below on the side street continued. The ancient doorman
appeared across the avenue, opened a taxicab door and let out
a young couple in evening dress. The man with the pushcart
had moved out of the light, and a night watchman with a flash
was inspecting areaways along the block.
He was almost asleep when Marian came in. She was hold-
ing a blue kimono around her, and he noticed for the first


272
FAMILIAR FACES
He yawned again. Then suddenly he got to his feet. Some-
thing was happening over there. The men with the picks and
wheelbarrows were still at work, but on the dark pavement
beside the Armory was a group of shadowy figures, steadying
something
"The bastards!” he said thickly. “They're breaking into the
Armory.”
He felt stunned. So that was it, the tearing up of the street as
a cover, the upper windows of the big building, glass and not
barred, the new rifles in their lockers in the drill shed.
He threw up the window and leaned out, as he did so a
shadowy figure climbed the ladder, moving with incredible
speed.
He threw up the window. Some of the shadowy faces on the
pavement seemed to be turned in his direction, but no one
moved. There was the sound of breaking glass, and Marian
caught at his arm.
"They'll kill you,” she said hysterically. “Look, one of them's
moving this way."
“Give me my gun. Quick. Where is it?"
"Bob! You can't shoot him. Get the police. You can't do
this by yourself.”
He glanced out. The man who looked like Mendel was at
the corner now, gazing up at him; the figure on top of the
ladder had disappeared, and now there were half a dozen men
climbing.
Suddenly he remembered the boy on guard inside the
Armory, under the tattered flags. He caught up the telephone
book, his hands shaking. But it took time to get the number,
and several of the climbers had reached the window before a
dignified young voice answered.
"Hello. Eighteenth Regiment Headquarters speaking."
“Listen, son,” he gasped. “They've broken into your place


274
FAMILIAR FACES
watching his window, and suddenly somebody was screaming
in a thin old voice. He knew who it was. It was the old lady,
and she was calling for help. She must have been at a side win-
dow, for he could not see her. Mendel was crossing the avenue
now, coming fast, his hand in his overcoat pocket. But at the
sounds he stopped and whirled. There was a sharp bark. The
screams ceased abruptly, one or two of the men with the picks
looked up and then went on with their work, and Mendel
ducked under the marquee below the window before Mr. Cas-
well could lean and fire.
He was dazed. The night wind eddied through the room,
blowing out the curtains, stirring the fronds of the Boston fern.
He was covered with a cold sweat, and down below, at the
foot of the elevator shaft, he could hear loud voices and the
sound of a struggle.
He looked at Marian, her kimono clutched tight around her
thin body over her small breasts. He saw that she had heard
the noise.
"I'm afraid there's trouble, honey," he said. “They saw me.
If you'll get out I'll hold them until the police get here."
“The police won't come here. It's too late, Bob."
Suddenly he was insane with fury, against Marian, against
all helpless and defenseless women.
“Then get the hell out of here,” he shouted. “What can I do
with you standing there?”
“I'm staying with you, Bob."
The sounds below had ceased. Across the street the truck had
packed up against the double doors to the drill shed. Only half
the men were at work on the cement. The others stood by the
truck, waiting. Waiting for the rifles, so they could take the
town. Take America. Take the world. And downstairs he
heard the elevator door slam. Mendel was coming up.
It was an old elevator. It climbed slowly. Marian had not


276
FAMILIAR FACES
Caswell was only vaguely aware of it. Marian was staring with
horrified eyes at Mendel's body.
“You've killed him," she whispered. “You've killed him.”
But Mr. Caswell was himself again. He was a normal Amer.
ican citizen who had done his duty, and now by God was
going to do his job. He went over and put his arms around her.
“Don't worry about that, darling," he said. "He needed kill-
ing, and all the rats like him."
“They'll arrest you, Bob.”
"I don't think they will. But I'm afraid there's no Florida
for us, old girl.”
She looked up at him, her face quiet and resigned.
"I never thought there would be.”
He went back to the window and stood looking out. The
street by the Armory was filled with police. Men were being
loaded into a wagon. The truck was making an attempt to
escape, but was being stopped. All around him other windows
were being raised. The old lady's light was still on. The oil
flares blazed. An officer fired a gun and a running man stum-
bled and fell.
Behind him old Tom was being sick on the elevator floor,
but Mr. Caswell did not know it. He was staring across the
street, where an old lady had not died in her bed, after all; and
at the Armory, where, inside, a boy who should have had his
life before him lay still, his sightless eyes raised to the tattered
flags above him.





280
FAMILIAR FACES
Some bundles of neckties lay on the cluttered desk, but Jake
paid no attention to them.
“Listen, Bennie,” he said. “I been standing out there think-
ing about something.” Bennie looked uneasy, and Jake picked
up a pen and fiddled with it. “I've been thinking I'd like to get
away from the business for a while.”
Bennie looked relieved.
“Sure,” he said. “Go to it! Why don't you take your car
and go somewhere?”
Jake shook his head.
“No,” he said. “What I'm going to do, I'm going to take a
walk."
“A walk! What d'you mean, a walk ?”.
Jake carefully drew a small square on a sheet of paper and
put a dot in the center of it. Bennie was surprised to see a look
of pain and almost childish appeal in his father's eyes when he
looked up.
“What I say; a walk," he said. “Just start out and walk
somewhere. I need exercise, and I like the country this time of
year. Your mamma and I, we both used to like it.”
Bennie eyed his father uneasily.
"If you've got it into your head that I don't need you here,
Pop—"
"Sure you need me here," Jake said comfortably. “You're a
good buyer; but if it wasn't for the old man sitting on your
neck and holding you down, where'd you be?”.
If Bennie had had any anxiety as to his father's state of mind,
that reassured him. He leaned over and, grinning, put a hand
on Jake's shoulder. He was relieved and easy. The old man
was still the old man.
“How long will you be gone?”.
“Maybe two days; maybe a week. I think I'll start in the
morning.”
wan.


MR. COHEN TAKES A WALK
281
When Bennie had gone, however, Jake's expression changed.
He had no illusions. Bennie was a good son, but Bennie did not
need him any more. Even the banking, that last clutch of the
old Jew on the business he had founded, had passed into
Bennie's hands; and the banks did for him what they would
not do for Jake.
He bent over and picked up the samples on the desk. Well,
maybe Bennie knew. They looked ugly to him, but Bennie
bought them and Cohen's sold them. Rachel now, Rachel had
had an eye for color. He sighed heavily, but when Bennie
looked in again he saw his father composedly leaning back in
his chair and counting his money.
"I've been thinking," Bennie said worriedly. "I don't know
about this trip, father. The roads have changed since your
day.”
"What can happen to an old man like me?" Jake demanded.
“Think I'm so pretty somebody'll run off with me?”
Bennie grinned. This was the Jake he knew, aggressive and
stubborn. He might have felt less comfortable, however, had
he followed Jake's thoughts that afternoon and evening; or
indeed at any time during the past few months. For Jake had
not only missed his wife and his business; he faced the inevi-
table tragedy of all elderly men who find themselves alone
and apparently not needed, while still feeling active and able
to give.
“Getting old and helpless and maybe dirty!” he would say
to himself. “Old women, they manage somehow; but old
men—"
He was not morbid. If there was somewhere in the back of
his mind the feeling that he would not be greatly missed if
he did not come back, his desire for the open road once more
was purely instinctive; a return to the days when, his pack on
his back, he had worked out his problems as he trudged the


284
FAMILIAR FACES
“Maybe I been sticking too close to business,” he reflected.
"I wouldn't have done that myself.”
He pondered that for some little time. The road had changed,
but people had not. They could still be kind, on occasion; and
an uneasy thought came to him that it was he who had
changed, not the world in general. Indeed he was still ponder-
ing it when, hot and thirsty, he turned off the main road into
a ravine for a rest and a drink of water, and there met the first
adventure of what was to be an adventurous day.
He had followed the ravine for some little distance when
just around a group of willows he came upon a man, stripped
to the waist and shaving. Evidently he had no mirror, for Jake
found him on his knees, using his reflection in the water for the
purpose.
He was a big man, neatly dressed so far as he was dressed at
all, and he eyed Jake with a cheerful grin.
“Hello, brother,” he said. “Fine day.”
“Good morning,” said Jake doubtfully. “I thought I'd like
a drink.”
“Good spring a few yards up."
Jake passed him and went on. When he came back the man
was putting on his collar, and Jake had a better chance to look
at him. Under a bright new sunburn there was a curious pallor,
and his suit not only showed wear, but it was, as Jake expertly
perceived, of a model ten years old. Jake thought he recognized
the situation, and he felt uneasy; but the man only grinned
again.
“Had your breakfast?” he asked.
“I had some coffee. Pretty early.”
“Well, have some with me. And don't worry about these
eggs. They're paid for!"
Jake saw now that a half dozen eggs and a loaf of bread
lay on a near-by stone, and that a small fire was burning. The
walk had made him hungry.
at him. Under a brillar, and Jake hadhame back the man


MR. COHEN TAKES A WALK
285
"If you got enough,” he began doubtfully.
“Enough! D’you suppose I can eat six eggs?"
They ate companionably, side by side. From under a rock
the stranger had produced an old frying pan, and carefully
scoured it with sand. He had some salt too, in a small paper
packet in his pocket, and he ate his fried eggs between two
slices of bread cut with a pocket knife. Jake followed his
example.
“I heard of this hangout while I was in stir,” the stranger re-
marked. “Understood there were some cans here too, but some-
body's carried them off.”
Jake had a queer sense of unreality. Stir meant jail. Therefore
he, Jacob Cohen, was sitting on a grass bank breaking bread
with an ex-convict. And that gentleman possessed a strong and
wicked looking pocketknife. He looked down uneasily at his
left shoe.
“You been in the penitentiary?” he inquired uneasily.
"Ten years. But I'm not kicking. They treated me pretty
fine.”
Jake hesitated, out of delicacy. “That's a pretty long stretch
you got,” he said finally. “It's a big piece out of a man's life.”
“You bet it is. But I had it coming to me, I suppose. Election
fight, as a matter of fact. I was working on the Eagle back in
town there; reporter. And this guy didn't like something I
said, so he came after me with a gun. I got him first, that's all.”
Jake said nothing. His mind was digesting this tale, and his
memory was helping him. He advertised extensively in the
Eagle.
“I guess I remember that case, now. Your name's Hawkins,
ain't it?”
"Right the first time," said Mr. Hawkins.
“I remember now. Seems to me you had a wife too."
Mr. Hawkins stiffened somewhat.
"Had is right," he said grimly. “Not that I blame her, you


286
FAMILIAR FACES
understand. Ten years is a long time. She stood it for seven.
Then she just quit.”
“Maybe married again, eh?”
. “No. She's working in Harrisburg. Got a shop there. Quit
coming and quit writing, I mean.”
“That's no way for a wife to act,” said Jake severely.
But Mr. Hawkins showed no resentment.
“Well, she'd stood a good bit anyhow. A newspaperman isn't
a very domestic animal, and she'd had her ups and downs.
Then, when there weren't any ups any more"
Jake looked at him, cautiously. It was plain to his shrewd
eyes that the cheerful Mr. Hawkins was controlling his voice
with some effort.
“I don't blame her," he repeated, and picking up a handful
of grass proceeded to rub his dusty shoes with it. “Last letter
she wrote, she said she wasn't so young as she had been, and
she'd have to strike out for herself. Well, she was right at that.
I don't hold it against her.”
But he changed the subject quickly.
“What about you? Not so young to be on the road, are you?”
"I got a home,” said Jake mildly. "But I used to be on the
road, and I thought I'd like to-well, just take a walk.”
Hawkins eyed him. The shabby figure, bent from the early
carrying of a pack, the unmistakable Semitic features, the worn
shoes. He knew the pride of the Jew, and not for a moment
did he believe Jake's story.
“Used to carry a pack along this very road,” said Jake. “But
my wife, she didn't like it. So I stopped.”
No place here to tell of Rachel's urging, of the desperate
venture of that first small clothing store and the privations
which had permitted it. Certainly no place to reveal who and
what he was now. Hawkins had told his story to a brother of
the road, and an inner delicacy in Jake prevented his destroying
that illusion.


MR. COHEN TAKES A WALK
287
He looked up at Hawkins with his shrewd old eyes.
“You got a job waiting somewhere, maybe?”
"Not yet. But I'll get one.”
“What kind of a job, eh? On a paper again? Maybe that
ain't so easy, Mr. Hawkins. It's pretty hard times. Newspapers
are feeling it; no advertising. Me and my son, we went over
last Sunday's Eagle, and I'll bet they're losing money. Sundays
anyhow."
"Well, there's always the river!" said Mr. Hawkins com-
posedly. "Trouble is, I'm such a damn good swimmer.”
“I wouldn't try that,” said Jake hastily. “Look, you're still
a young man. It's when a man's old and nobody needs him that
he thinks of the river.” Mr. Hawkins looked at him quickly,
but Jake was fumbling in his pockets.
"I give you a note,” he said. “To a young man I know. He's
got a store, and he's doing pretty well.” He glanced at Mr.
Hawkins's clothing. “If you're going after a job you'll need
some clothes.”
“What's the matter with these?"
Jake looked pained. He knew that suit. He knew what it
had cost a dozen years ago. He could have reckoned to a dollar
the inconsiderable expense of everything Mr. Hawkins wore,
except his worn shoes. Cohen's did not carry shoes.
"I used to have a little business of my own,” he said. “What
happened when a man came in to see me about something, eh?
You want to know? I looked him over. If he looked like failure
I didn't want him, see?"
"And perhaps he looked fine, and he owed for every stitch
he had on!”
"Maybe,” said Jake calmly. “But if he owed he'd got credit.
And credit's something these days."
If this was a slip Mr. Hawkins did not notice it, and Jake
in the meantime had produced a piece of paper from his pocket
and was busily scribbling. What he wrote was an order to


292
FAMILIAR FACES
town and she stopped the car. For reasons of his own Jake left
her there, and some time later he rejoined her with a cheerful
grin.
“All fixed, miss,” he said. “Now you stop worrying. If he's
to be found he will be, and in a hurry."
But he did not tell her that to accomplish all this he had
called an important business executive from an equally im-
portant conference; or of the conversation which had followed
his description of the boy and his name.
"All right, Manny. You find him and get him home; and
there's a check for five hundred for your organization.”
"Feeling all right?” inquired Manny, with concern. “Not
suddenly lost your mind or something, Jake?”
“Don't you worry about my mind. Can you find him? That's
all.”
“Find him! For five hundred dollars! Listen! For five hun-
dred dollars I could find Charlie Ross!"
The girl was very grateful when he went back to her, but
she did not go at once. She sat in her shabby car, thoughtfully
inspecting the old man and his old dog.
“I was just wondering,” she said. “You know how it is on
a farm these days. But we always have enough to eat; and if
you'd like to come back with me you could do a little work and
-well, have a place to stay for a while.”
Jake looked up at her.
“And you'd pick an old man off the road and take him into
your house!”
“Why not?” she said, in a businesslike manner. "I owe you
something, don't I? And we're shorthanded anyhow. Maybe
when times get better we could pay you something, too."
There was a tightness in Jake's throat. Curious, how a man
in the city lost his bearings, he thought. He gave to the Com-
munity Chest and all sorts of things; but all it meant was sign-
man


MR. COHEN TAKES A WALK 293
ing a check. This was like the old days again when he was
peddling, and as often as not there would be a meal, or at least
a cool drink and an invitation to rest. That was in the country,
of course. The city had been different. It was dog eat dog there.
Well, he'd eaten his own share of dog in his time.
He roused himself. .
"Listen, miss,” he said gravely. “You're a kindhearted girl,
but don't you go picking people off the road because you're
sorry for them. And I'm grateful to you, but I'll have to be
going on. I got a little business in Harrisburg."
He felt a trifle forlorn after the rattling old car had driven
off. He stood looking after it. At the corner the girl leaned out
and waved her hand, and he waved back. He remembered that
Rachel had always wanted a daughter.
“A son, he gets married and you lose him," she used to say.
“But a girl, Jake, maybe she don't live at home but she keeps
coming back. She don't forget like a boy does.”
Well, Bennie was a good son, and a good businessman. He
thought rather uneasily as he started on of Bennie and that
check for five hundred dollars to Manny's organization; Bennie
had no use for boys who ran away from home.
TV
At an outlying butcher shop Jake stopped and bought some
meat for the old dog. The dog now walked closely beside
him sniffing at the package, and a mile out of town Jake
stopped and fed him.
It was while he was feeding the dog that he discovered how
hungry he was himself. He was suddenly ravenous. Not in
years had he been so famished. If he could get a good farm
meal now, he reflected; and as if in answer to that he lifted
his head and saw a belated threshing crew in a field, and a
farmhouse close by.


294
FAMILIAR FACES
Well he knew the meals served to the threshers, the vast
platters of meat and vegetables, the pie and cake, the pickles
and preserves. His mouth fairly watered at the thought, and
his return to an ancient strategy was almost automatic. He
simply sat down on a bank under a tree and waited for the
farm dinner bell to ring. When it did, he allowed the crew to
start toward the house, and then slowly followed them.
Up to that time he might have been traveling in a new world,
so far as landmarks were concerned. But as he approached the
farmhouse there was something vaguely familiar about it; so
familiar that it was with his old ingratiating smile that he
knocked at the kitchen door and asked for food. The hot-
faced elderly woman who answered was apparently a stranger
to him, however, and she showed no enthusiasm whatever. She
eyed him coldly, but Jake's smile slowly broadened. He knew
her now. Thirty years, and he knew her.
“We don't feed tramps,” she said, and was about to close
the door. Jake, however, had not faced doors like that for years
without learning a trick or two. He leaned heavily against the
frame, an entire arm and shoulder in the way.
“And that's the way you treat your friends!” he said, still
smiling.
She inspected him more closely, his squat figure, the humped
back, the wise and twinkling old eyes. “Good gracious, you
aren't the peddler who used to come around here years
ago?”
"Sure, I am."
"Well, think of that!” she said. “And still on the road! Some-
body told me you'd got on and had a store somewhere."
"I did have. But-well, you know the way things have been
going!”
She nodded and threw the door wide open.
“I've got a threshing crew to feed," she said, “but there's


296
FAMILIAR FACES
who was kind to me and to—who was kind to me when I
needed it, I kinda like to show how I feel. I got a little bill here
to pay for my dinner, and I was thinking of hiding it where
you'd find it later. But you might think it was a mistake.”
“I don't want your money. If I can't feed an old friend”
"What's the use of an old friend if he can't act like one?"
In the end he folded the bill carefully so she would not see
the size of it, and slid it into her apron pocket.
"You get a girl with that for a day or two,” he said. “A good
strong hired girl, that ain't too proud to work. That's what you
need.”
He went away quickly, before she could see the size of the
bill. And he went with a new warmth in his heart and a rather
queer feeling that, after all these years, he was only beginning
to live.
He did not feel old today, or useless. Perhaps he belonged
on the road. Or perhaps the road belonged to him, to use as
his justification for living. Not that he said all this, even to
himself. Indeed, when he addressed the old dog it was without
sentiment.
“What you need,” he said, “is a bath and some flea powder.
And I don't mean maybe.”
They started on together. The dog now walked beside him,
and occasionally it licked his hand. But neither of them walked
far. Owing to Jake's age and his bent body, or to the evident
weariness of the old dog, one car after another picked him up
that afternoon. Thus he found himself being carried in turn
by another Ford, a milk truck, in the sidecar of a motorcycle,
and in a limousine. And thus, at six o'clock that evening the
odd pair found themselves in Harrisburg, and Jake was con-
sulting a telephone directory.
He found Mrs. Hawkins without difficulty. At least he found
the modest hat shop, and a youngish woman there who was


MR. COHEN TAKES A WALK 297
closing up for the night, and who looked up with a faint
frown when he entered.
"Sorry,” she said shortly. “I can't help anybody. It's all I can
do to help myself.”
Jake smiled beneath his dirt and his day's stubble of gray
beard.
"Well, well,” he said. “Don't cry before you're bitten. Not
but what I know how you feel myself, Mrs. Hawkins. I have
a store of my own.”
“Oh. You have a store too, have you? Or is that a joke?"
But Jake was tired and dusty, and in no mood for explana-
tion.
“Listen," he said. “Right now I'm on a walking trip, and
this morning I ran into a fellow I used to know. Fine fellow
too, but he'd had a bit of bad luck."
She was gazing at him with a certain intentness.
"Interesting, but why tell me?”
"That's just what I want to know. When a woman sticks
for seven years it shows she's got good stuff in her. But when
she lasts that long and then she quits!”.
"He's out, then!"
“Yes. He's out. And I'm here to say that it's my business to
know men, and that if a man sticks for ten years and ain't
soured and ugly at the end of it, he's got good stuff in him,
too.” His voice softened. “Why did you quit him, anyhow?” he
asked her. “You were all he had. And now he ain't got even
that.”
To his surprise she suddenly sat down behind the counter
and buried her face in her arms.
"I don't know,” she said drearily. “I suppose I just got tired,
and it seemed so long."
Jake leaned over the counter and touched her bent head.
“Lots of us get tired,” he told her gently. “I've lost my wife


MR. COHEN TAKES A WALK
299
“Did you do what I told you? That's what I'm asking,
Bennie."
“Sure I did. Looked like a million dollars.”
“What about Smith ?”
"He howled. What did you expect? Said he was going to
quit and let the advertisers run the paper."
“I don't care what he said. What did he do?”
"He took him back," said Bennie. “After I'd agreed to add
to our Sunday spread.”
Jake was practically speechless.
“The dirty robber," he shouted. “After all we paid them all
these years!"
"Well, you will have your little fun, Pop!" said Bennie
cheerfully.
Jake ate another huge meal at a cheap restaurant that evening,
and the dog sat beside him and ate scraps from his plate.
“Looks like he's empty all the way down," Jake said to the
waitress. “Don't know as I ever seen a dog eat like that.”
"You and him both!” said the girl, looking down at the odd
pair with something like pity. “Maybe I could get some scraps
from the kitchen, and you could take them along. How about
it??
Jake agreed, but when she came back he saw that the neatly
tied package was not scraps. What she had found for him was
a breakfast. “There's some bread and butter and ham in there,”
she explained rather shyly. “And some scraps for Fido too!"
It was not until after he had gone that she found the five-
dollar bill Jake had left under his plate, and stood staring at it.
"Well, can you tie that?" she said.
Out in the street Jake sniffed the night air. He had meant to
get a room somewhere, but the evening was warm and not so
far out of town there would be the open fields, and certainly


300
FAMILIAR FACES
stacks of fresh hay. It was a long time since he had slept in
the open and looked at the stars. Rachel used to know some of
them. She had known a lot of curious things.
He walked along, carefully keeping out of the way of in-
numerable cars, and watching the dog, which seemed to have
developed a suicidal tendency. But the town straggled inter-
minably, and to add to Jake's discomfort very soon he dis-
covered that someone was walking stealthily behind him. This
would have been less disconcerting had Jake not become aware
that this follower was adapting his pace to his. Jake tested this.
He slowed up and so did the man behind him. Cold chills
broke out over Jake, and out of sheer inability to go on he
stopped entirely.
The man came up to him. In the light of a passing car Jake
had a quick impression of a thin desperate face and of a hand
in the right-hand pocket of a threadbare coat. Then the man
spoke.
“All right,” he said. “I'll take what you've got. And no noise
about it.”
They were hardly more than two shadows now, but Jake
had detected something in the bandit's voice that alarmed him
still further. The man was scared; he was shaking with nerves,
and if there was a pistol in that pocket-
"If you'll take your hand off that revolver I'll give you what
I have. It isn't much.”
"Don't you worry about that hand. And hurry.”
Probably Jake would have done just this, but the dog was
sniffing uneasily at the stranger's legs, and at that moment the
highwayman discovered it and kicked him.
The dog howled, and at that sound Mr. Jacob Cohen, of
Cohen and Company, haberdashers, suddenly became a lunatic,
a wild and fighting fool. He lowered his heavy head and
charged the bandit in the stomach, and that gentleman of


MR. COHEN TAKES A WALK
301
the road spent the next few moments in getting back his breath,
while lying doubled up in the road.
Not perhaps in forty years had Jake felt the same exaltation
as when, pistol in hand, he prodded the prostrate figure and
addressed it.
“Get up, and be quick about it,” he snarled. “And I ain't
fooling, either. I've got the gun. Back you go to the police
station."
The bandit got feebly to his feet, and let out a thin cackle of
laughter; rather grim laughter, however.
"Try and hold me!” he said. “That gun isn't loaded.”
He was edging away, and as Jake was totally unfamiliar with
firearms, he found himself rather at a loss.
“That's a good story."
"It's true. Look at it. I needed money, but I'm no killer."
“Let's get this straight,” said Jake severely, “You ain't a
regular holdup man, eh?”
"First try. Only thing I haven't tried, so far, and I couldn't
even get away with that.” ,
“Needed money, eh?” said Jake. "What for? Booze?”
“God, no! My wife's having a baby, and the doctor wouldn't
come unless I paid him first. Don't blame him. He's brought
three for nothing."
"And that's the truth, is it?”
"I can show her to you, on the road a mile beyond here.
There's a neighbor woman with her now. I suppose you're
keeping the gun?”
“Why?”
The stranger smiled faintly.
"I might have better luck next time!"
But to his surprise his intended victim had sat down on the
ground and was carefully engaged in removing his left shoe.
He took it off, apparently extracted a pebble from it and then


302
FAMILIAR FACES
replaced it. This proceeding did not interest him. He had bent
down and was patting the dog, which seemed to bear no malice.
"Sorry I kicked him. I was scared.”
"Well,” said Jake philosophically, “it's a mistake to kick any
man's dog. But maybe if you hadn't, I'll walk along with you,
and if you're telling the truth we'll see what can be done.”
"All right. But hurry."
That was the fastest mile Jake walked that day. The other
man was silent. Now and then in the light of passing cars he
caught a glimpse of Jake, and the shabby stooped old figure
gave little promise of being able to do very much. Jake, too,
was silent. Partly he was out of breath. Partly, too, he was re-
membering Rachel, and the awful night when Bennie was
born.
"Hard world for women,” he panted once.
“I'll say it is.”
Then came the end of the mile, and a small cottage beside the
road, with a woman in the doorway.
“Will he come?” she called.
"No."
“I don't know what to do. She's pretty bad right now."
Jake did not go in. The bit of conversation had satisfied his
doubts, and now he held out the second of his hundred-dollar
bills.
"You go back and get that doctor," he said. “And”-he fum-
bled awkwardly in his pocket—“here's the gun. Better bury it
somewhere. Not every man you hold up's likely to have a
dog!"
He had a shrewd idea that the man was about to cry. Cer-
tainly he was unable to speak, and so Jake chose that moment
to make his getaway.
It was a mile or two beyond the cottage that Jake looked
down at the dog with a whimsical smile.


MR. COHEN TAKES A WALK
303
"Another day like this,” he said, “and you and me will be
forced into bankruptcy. How'll you like that?”
The dog wagged his tail. It was the first time he had done so,
and Jake's gratification was complete.
VI
When, shortly after this, Jake struck a match and examined
the thin gold watch which Emily had substituted for his old
hunting-case, he was astounded to find that it was only nine
o'clock.
He was very weary, and the haystack he sought was elusive.
Now and then he would stop by a fence and examine the gloom
beyond, only to go on again. The road was almost empty now.
It seemed to belong to him and to the dog; and he began to
have a feeling that death must be like this, a moving on
through the dark and a search, and then perhaps a light some-
where, and Rachel standing in it.
With the rising of the moon, however, he became more
cheerful. The road was no longer a trail into the dark but a
white path, vital and throbbing with life. It called to him, to
go on; tomorrow, the next day and the next. A man lived on
the road; in an office he died. Perhaps the Wandering Jew had
lived a good life, after all.
But he had not found his haystack. Once he saw what
seemed to be a promising prospect, and letting down the bars
of a dirt lane he went into a field. What he found, however,
was only a clump of small trees, and he started back for the
road again.
He did not quite reach it. A car had stopped at the bars into
the lane, a clumsy-looking vehicle which resembled no car he
had ever seen, and which had as a trailer a strange contraption
over the top of which loomed something white and mysterious,
which moved in the moonlight.












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