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THE LOVE LEGEND
THE LOVE LEGEND
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK :: :: :: :: 1922
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BT
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Printed in the United States of America
Published in October, 1922
TO
GRACE WOODWARD
AND
DUNCAN M. SMITH
2134231
CONTENTS
PACK
BOOK I. ANITA i
BOOK n. SARI 97
BOOK III. DIZZY 187
BOOK IV. WARD 255
BOOK ONE
ANITA
CHAPTER I
WARD HARRIS, at twenty, wore a virginal look like
golden rain infiltrated through the stuff of a morning
meadow; a look that came from her trust in the love
legend, in which she had put all the capital of her
youthful hopes, since her mother's whispered story of
the prince who was to come and change the world
with a magic kiss. Thus Mrs. Harris phrased it her
theory that four men, exhibiting popular superlatives,
like models smirking in pink and yellow gowns at a
fashion show, were to take form in her household and,
after suitable rites and emotional upheavals, unite
themselves in marriage with her four daughters, Anita,
Ward, Sari and Dizzy.
This tradition was matter for amusement for the
three girls, Nita, Sari and Dizzy. Ward alone was
credulous about the perfection of her future life.
Delicately beautiful, immaculate, exquisite, Ward
seemed meant by nature for the heroine of a fairy
tale. She had seriously tried to follow her mother's
suggestion that she gaze upon the eternal hills and the
everlasting seas for the purpose of gaining poise a
quality which she had unconsciously possessed since
babyhood. She hoped in this way to win her flawless
husband, who would, of course, be attracted solely by
her goodness, sweetness and purity.
II
This hot July afternoon Ward came out of the
house to stroll down to the lake. Her mother and
3
4 THE LOVE LEGEND
Mrs. Partridge, who lived across the street, were shel-
tered by the porch from the young, blue world of sea
and sky. They could taste the cool, fresh odor of
Michigan, crystal cold, in a wavering breeze that laz-
ily brushed by. The laughter of happy children
swimming and dabbling in the water floated up to
them, as Ward, smiling and murmuring phrases of
greeting and farewell, crossed their vision and passed
out of sight.
The visitor leaned forward in the wicker porch
chair and spoke in a low tone, quickened with melo-
dramatic enjoyment.
"Don't let that man Wicker come near Ward."
Mrs. Harris looked up from her sewing with a startled
eye, casting herself effortlessly into the role of chicken
mother protecting her offspring under her wing a
picture she was ever cherishing of herself and seldom
being allowed to portray.
Mrs. Partridge related her bit of gossip in a low
voice which sounded at a distance like the hum of
some fine piece of machinery; machinery which turned
out such industriously collected scraps with all the
perfection of an art cultivated through some forty or
fifty thousand female ancestors. "* * * and I know
how dear Ward is always the magnet for any new man
that comes to town, and I did feel that I ought to tell
you what I know about this man."
Mrs. Harris, who had been enjoying the incident by
shaking her head and looking grave over what her
daughters would have described as the juiciest parts
of the entertainment, thanked Mrs. Partridge soberly
and said she would certainly speak to her girls.
THE LOVE LEGEND
III
Lakeshore, a division of Chicago, like all small com-
munities, had its own village cast of characters; a wo-
man's club, led by Mrs. Partridge, a book club with
members who yearned, and a country club with a
cheerful aroma of immorality sitting rakishly on its
towers and terraces like a halo askew on the head of
a drunken saint.
Of this neighborhood, Mrs. Harris was the grand
dame, taken seriously, feared and fawned upon by
everyone but her own daughters. Her father had at-
tained some degree of wealth by selling much of his
land in the vicinity to the Illinois Steel company,
which throbbed and bellowed to the south of them at
the mouth of the Calumet river. Mrs. Harris had in-
herited the house and a moderate income when he died,
and had come, a newly widowed with four children, to
live in it five years before.
In her early twenties she had left Lakeshore to
marry the Reverend Tyndall Harris of Hyde Park, a
town which then lay between the village of Lake-
shore and Chicago. Born with a talent for visiting the
poor, relieving the sick and converting the heathen, a
minister's wife was to her the ideal position. And
Tyndall Harris was youthful, brilliant and sincere
she could easily classify him as a fairy prince, espe-
cially in retrospect.
People called him the greatest churchman in the
middle west, the only intellectual in his profession,
other hyperboles treasured by her. Those days!
Their memory was her secret life of which Ward was
the living symbol, for Nita and Ward had been born
during this happy period.
6 THE LOVE LEGEND
But before Sari was born tragedy came. Tyndall
Harris repudiated the church, and in his own dramat-
ic, uncompromising way, surrendered his position in
the community and went into the department of Eng
lish Literature at the University of Chicago. Evolu-
tion, materialism, socialism. Socialism was the new
Christianity that was to remedy the evils of society,
and it was a banner under which his passionately cru-
sading nature could march.
Socialism, the whole pot of it, sweetened by his own
aesthetic and imaginative gifts, filtered through his lec-
tures in English literature, crept into his essays, and
was openly expressed to his ever-growing Sunday
evening following.
In the bitter months before Sari was born Mrs.
Harris strove to adjust herself to the new order. Her
inner life, of intimate contact with a great, holy man,
was gone. She spent hours on her knees, imagining
that she was trying to forgive her husband, and for a
period she thought with a mind unmisted by senti-
ment. Then she wove a new curtain of illusions
which had shut out unpleasant realities ever since.
IV
Dizzy, the youngest, became her father's constant
companion. She followed him about like a small dog
and took over his philosophy with ardent interest.
His thoughts were her thoughts, and five years after
his death he was still the strongest influence in her
life. She saw life with an intellectual and caustic eye,
even at sixteen. She had decided that love was merely
the mating instinct, a chemical process.
Sari, too, scoffed unmercifully at the love legend.
She was now eighteen and in open rebellion against
THE LOVE LEGEND 7
her mother. She had graduated from Lakeshore high
school that spring and had intentions of going on the
stage as a dancer; she was studying with a profes-
sional, unknown to her mother, who supposed that
Sari's daily lessons and hot, long hours at the studio,
portended nothing more than a parlor accomplishment
a horror still fashionable in her mind. Meanwhile
Sari she had been christened Sarah but had adopted
the Hungarian name which she pronounced Sharree
took every opportunity for flirting that offered. She
scattered kisses in a way to cause the prince to mount
his noble steed and leave her in outer darkness. Care-
less of this approaching disaster, Sari had fixed her
mind on a career similar to Pavlowa's and was secretly
looking forward to the first of August, when she was
to make her professional debut.
Nita, the oldest, who was twenty-two the sisters
were two years apart had accepted the love legend,
outwardly, adding inwardly, the true American philos-
ophy that you have to work for what you get; her
husband would come along because she would make
him come. Her ambition was popular success in what
she called art magazine covers her goal. She had
adopted Christian Science as her religion at the age
of sixteen, and was the best friend of her sister Ward,
whom she hood-winked, as she did most women a
woman's idol, Nita.
CHAPTER II
I
MRS. PARTRIDGE had just risen to leave when Ward
returned from the lake accompanied by a pink and
white young man whose yellow locks shone like a
Swedish servant girl's.
When Ward had presented him it developed that he
was a member of one of those choice organizations
which are able to hold the social reins in most Ameri-
can colleges; that Ward had met him the winter be-
fore when he had come up from the University of Cali-
fornia to attend the fraternity convention in Chicago;
that he had finished his engineering course at Berkely
that June; that he had been sent to the steel mills with
two other young men to begin a career; that the three
young men were living in a boarding house together,
being fortunate members of the same organization;
and that he was to bring the other two over that eve-
ning to call. Mrs. Partridge, who frequently gave in-
formal talks to groups of Lakeshore women on the
moral baseness of men, paradoxically suggested a
beach party that the young men might meet several
of the girls of Lakeshore, including her own daughter
Helene.
The idea was echoed by Ward and her mother and
a moment or so later by Anita, who came up the street
from the train flushed with the heat of the day, her
curly, black hair loosened a bit under her shade hat.
She had been in the studio all day working in oils and
felt the atmosphere of paint on her still, as Ward in-
troduced her to Howard Blackton.
8
THE LOVE LEGEND 9
Anita's eyes gave the effect of being black under
their long lashes. When she was interested, as she
was now, they opened wide and seemed to absorb im-
pressions, to flash a vigorous interest in the person
with whom she was talking. She gave herself to
Blackton, unusually. He seemed interested, also unu-
sually, for Nita was the sort of girl, not beautiful, but
well groomed, who fetched a retinue of feminine wor-
shipers, but left most young men cold.
II
She thought about him as she made herself ready
for dinner. She had liked the solid way hi which he
planted his feet on the pavement as he walked away.
She liked his smooth, fine-grained skin, his stocky air
of solidness, as if he were just on the edge of becoming
a responsible business man.
For, of late, sex had been bothering her. She did
not yearn for love, but she hated to miss anything.
Dandiacal in the trappings of sentiment, her naked
self was firm and purposeful. She had spent her
twenty-two years in becoming the wholesome Ameri-
can girl, the typical college girl, which she smugly was.
As the typical American girl she adroitly press-
agented herself, and was accepted by the girls and
women of Lakeshore, her university contemporaries
and other enthusiastic feminine acquaintances. They
liked her. They understood her. She did the things
they admired in a way they admired. Her subtle
publicity, curtained by a sophisticated manner, clev-
erly concealed the bragging she did. When she
showed one of her drawings she was able to throw off
an impression of carelessness it was nothing to what
she could do, her feminine audience felt. She worked
10 THE LOVE LEGEND
hard to maintain this surface appearance of ease,
which was dear to her heart. In her conversation she
scorned popularity, and yet allowed it to be obvious
that she was the most liked member of the family.
She was conventional enough to want to ally her-
self with some church and so turned to a religion
which promised success in every line of work. Chris-
tian Science, she said, worked wonders for her.
Through it she intended to get what she wanted and
understood, success, the big end of the bargain.
Truth, beauty, art, love, justice, were mere disguises
with her for the one word, success.
Ill
In the kitchen Ward was fixing the salad for dinner
when Sari, in a bathrobe, hot and barefooted, bounded
wrathfully in, demanding to know why her bath water
wasn't heated.
An old woman stirred something at the kitchen
stove. At first glance this old woman seemed as
amazing and intricate as the smart young women who
emulate the fashions as depicted hi Harper's Bazaar
and Vogue. Not only were her sunken cheeks red-
dened but she was whitewashed over the place where
the gums fell away. Lips were painted on her face
in the shape of a cupid's bow, but her own lips, shaped
on more generous lines, made a feeble protest of indi-
viduality underneath. Her deep-set eyes were ringed
with black, and her eyebrows, which for some reason
she had neglected to pull out, though it was the fash-
ion, hung weedy and unkempt on the projection of
her forehead. Endless detail clung to her, little bows,
crimped hair, ruffles, ribbons. Her figure, slightly
hunched at the shoulders, was hung with odds and
ends of clothing.
THE LOVE LEGEND 11
"No hot water, of course," said Sari, shaking her
bobbed head to emphasize the outrage. "After work-
ing myself cock-eyed at the studio all day to come
home to find that this family has used up every
drop"
Cock-eyed was one of the conversational staples
that Sari used quite indiscriminately. It meant every-
thing, anything, or nothing. This time she meant to
convey a state of extreme exhaustion due to heat and
work.
Ward turned to the ancient at the stove.
"You must have forgotten to light the gas under
the tank when I told you to, Olive "
"Well, yes'm. I didn't see no sense in having it
lighted. Besides I'm scared of these here gas lighters
never know when a person is going to get her head
knocked off."
Sari stared at the woman Olive in surprise which
swiftly merged into merriment. She was new in the
household, one of the string of fluctuating housemaids
that were always passing through the Harris estab-
lishment.
A caricature like Olive was an open sesame to a sea
of mirth in which the four girls could loose themselves.
Though each carried an inner personality, deadly ser-
ious and secret, she could throw it to the winds when
touched by the comic, tasting a perfect companionship
with her sisters in laughter.
So Sari flung herself down the stairs shrieking into
her bare arm, collapsed against the water heater, weak
with hilarity. She lit the gas and scrambled up the
two flights of stairs to share her discovery with Anita.
Ward joined them and they rolled on the bed, as de-
lighted as puppies because they all three found Olive
genuinely funny.
12 THE LOVE LEGEND
IV
Mrs. Harris, at the head of her table, futilely loving,
vaguely anxious, was a dulled nonentity, barely exist-
ing in the minds of her four daughters. And yet, each
was her own reflection. It was as if she had origi-
nally possessed all their vital qualities, but had ejected
them, one by one, and now only exhibited faded facets
that were brilliantly mirrored in her children.
The four girls sat there, discontented and restless,
each concerned with her own perturbations, concen-
trating on her own desires. All were eager to plunge
into the race of life and win win prizes there were
to be no blanks each being held back for different
reasons, chafed and fretted and showed her dislike for
her situation in sporadic attempts at domestic reform.
The entrance of Olive signalled suppressed giggles
from Ward, Sari and Anita, but as the old creature
trailed out of the room, Dizzy turned on them fu-
riously. Her pig-tails cadenced her pungent sarcasm
as she nodded, first to Sari, then to Nita, then to Ward.
"That's awfully funny, isn't it? Extremely humor-
ous to see an old woman working in someone's kitchen
to keep from starving!"
"It is pathetic," said Anita, "but the way she gets
herself up is so killing."
"We'll have to lock up all our cosmetics," said
Ward, lilts of laughter in her voice. "She's such a
beauty that I'm afraid to have her in the house for
fear she'll attract all our beaux."
"Why it is any worse for her to lay snares to at-
tract men than it is for Ward, I cannot see," observed
TAsacf ia the same accusing tone.
'^Elizabeth," protested her mother.
THE LOVE LEGEND 13
"Well, Ward does try to attract men," said Dizzy,
with the frock-coated manner of a public speaker.
"A man isn't safe within a mile of her. And why?
Why? Because she is so beautiful that they can't
resist her? No. Because she won't let them resist
her. In vulgar language she's a vamp. And why it's
any worse for this old kitchen drudge to be one than
it is for Ward, I cannot see."
"Ward is successful occasionally," observed Anita,
with a detached, superior air she gave all of the fam-
ily, except Ward, most of the time.
"Yes!" Dizzy clipped out the monosyllable. They
were still laughing. She went on, attempting to mar-
shal an argument as she had heard members of the
Socialist party do on the debating platform. "Suc-
cess! That is all you care about. You'd excuse any-
thing on the ground of success. Caesar Borgia,
Napoleon Bonaparte and Captain Kidd were success-
ful, too, but it doesn't follow that they were virtuous,
does it? They were all crooks "
"Diz has such an awful lot of statistics to work out
of her system," interrupted Sari, "she's always spill-
ing 'em "
"Successful!" said Diz, finding her point with the
satisfaction of a baby discovering a lost nipple. "What
if Ward is successful? That only makes it worse.
There is absolutely no justification in it for Ward. It
is pure dissipation with her. She indulges herself in
breaking men's hearts just for her own amusement.
But with this poor old creature it is a case of economic
necessity. Why, she realizes that unless she gets some
man to support her she can spend her old age in the
poorhouse. And so, she is desperately trying the arts
and wiles of the modern girl. She made a mistake in
14 THE LOVE LEGEND
not marrying when she was younger and she realizes
it now, so she is doing her bes "
"Dear me, Dizzy, you're becoming quite sentimen-
tal over the old girl," Anita said.
"Sentimental!" Dizzy exclaimed. It was the one
charge she could not endure. She dropped her fork
and collapsed suddenly into silence, regarding a spot
on the wall across from her for some moments in des-
perate thought about the stupidity of her family.
The platitude that sixteen is wiser than sixty was
exemplified in Dizzy. She was unable to conceive of
such a thing as mystery. To her, most problems were
nothing. All knowledge existed for her to acquire.
She had merely to study. Life lay before her like a
partly colored map of the world. There were one or
two places still to be crayoned. When she had fin-
ished school the chart would be filled in. She would
know everything. She considered herself to be free
from all the weaknesses in which Ward and her mother
took pride and joy. Her dominant emotion was in-
dignation, which, in conversation, focused to a desire
to appear in a spotlight of infallibility.
"Mother," she burst out. "I simply can't go back
to school this fall."
"Why Dizzy, what do you mean?" Mrs. Harris
asked.
"I mean that it's an insult to my intelligence to keep
me in that stupid school any longer. Why the teach-
ers are all fossils and old fogies. There is only one
teacher there that knows more than I do, and I've had
all the courses he gives. And I know a boy that got
into the University of Illinois last year by passing the
examinations, and you only have to have fifteen cred-
its to get in, and I have thir "
THE LOVE LEGEND IS
"Illinois is just one party after another, they say,"
said Ward. "Five men to every girl."
"I know I wouldn't like it," said Dizzy impatiently,
"but I've got to get through college some way, and
the quickest possible way is the one I want to take."
"And go away from home to a co-educational school
when you are only sixteen years old?" said Mrs. Har-
ris, attenuating her tones with the right degree of hor-
ror. "When I was your age I often thought I knew
more than my elders, but by the time you are as old
as I"
"Oh, mother," said Dizzy, brutally, "don't pull that
old stuff, for heaven's sake! I know when my intel-
lectual capacity is greater than the person I am talk-
Ing with. I know when I'm face to face with a person
that is better educated than I am. Only one member
of the teaching force is better educated than I. The
rest are the usual muddle-headed, half educated mem-
bers of the teaching profession that you find polluting
the mind of the young American in all our institutions.
I won't stand it. I won't be insulted by sitting down
in a class and going to school to my intellectual infer-
iors. I won't. So you can just make up your mind
to that, mother. I thought I'd better tell you as I am
going to begin studying for the college entrance exami-
nations this fall."
"My dear child, you will do nothing of the sort,"
said Mrs. Harris, but she was drowned out by Sari,
who said hotly to Dizzie:
"Say, what's the idea of reading yourself cock-
eyed? You're a disgusting shark. Everybody at
school said so. You burst facts all the time. I should
think you'd pop with all that mess of junk you've
learned."
16
"Sari, really, your talk is hardly fit for a gentle-
woman's table."
Sari launched her bomb:
"I'm against a college education for women, any-
way, and I don't intend to go at all."
"Why Sari," gasped Mrs. Harris, alarmed by this
sentiment more than by Dizzie's vehemence. "Why,
what nonsense. How old-fashioned. You girls are
always railing at me for being old-fashioned, yet I
have always stood for things like the emancipation of
women and college education for women, and "
She rambled into a discourse that was very near
tears and which was taken no notice of by the girls,
each of whom dropped into her own thoughts imme-
diately on the beginning of it. When she had argued
herself to a climax, made her point triumphantly, con-
founding all of the arguments of the girls, she wan-
dered on into a discussion of the evening's entertain-
ment.
"Do you know that Mrs. Partridge warned mother
not to let some young man named Wicker come near
us?" Anita interrupted. "He is thought to have de-
signs on Ward."
"Well, you can't laugh that off," said Sari, using
one of her meaningless phrases.
'Dizzy, conveying short-cake to her mouth stopped,
convulsed. "No!"
"Well, really girls, I fail to see the point of this.
Mrs. Partridge was kind enough to warn me not to
let you become entangled with a young man whose rep-
utation is extremely unsavory. I hope that you will
pay attention to it."
She subsided. The girls went on talking and gig-
gling over their coffee. Without the quiet gentle lake
murmured and laughed and seemed to snuggle closer
THE LOVE LEGEND 17
to the shore; the moon, lemon colored and imperfectly
oval, waited high above the old maple tree on the sand
for the meeting of boys and girls in her little ring of
moonshine.
CHAPTER III
THE white-clad feet of the- three boys, Howard
Blackton, Roderick Preston and Bill Wicker, printed
blurred tracks in the smooth, soft sand, still warm from
the sun that had baked it all day. They carried sticks,
dragged logs and inexpertly built a beach fire. Away
to the south along the water's edge the steel mills
growled, exclaimed sonorously and vomited orange-red
and luminous slag. Lake and sky reflected countless
gradations of fire color as if the sleepy sun on its way
to bed had been jerked for an instant into splendid
contrast with the midnight blue velvet sky. A thou-
sand shades merged softly into one a single glow that
slowly faded. And the stars once more seemed bril-
liant like a million candles that had just been lit.
Roderick Preston was a sketch in pen and ink done
by Mr. James Montgomery Flagg; a drawing of a
heroic character in American fiction. Handsome, cour-
teous, with a natural grand pose enveloping him like a
huge motor coat, his amiable and obvious excellencies
dominated the other two. Mr. Bill Wicker of the un-
savory reputation was small, dapper, with cinnamon
brown eyes, and curly hair. A simplicity of manner
verging on mild idiocy hid the wickedness with which
he had been credited that afternoon.
To the party came Mrs. Field, her daughter Mary
and son Frank. Mary's statuesque and heavy loveli-
ness was caricatured in her mother, who looked as if
she had been created in Mary's image and chucked
18
THE LOVE LEGEND 19
under the chin by a rakish god while the clay was
still wet. Frank was called Frankie, and was noted
locally for an indescribable walk; as if Frankie were
upheld by invisible strings attached to the seat of his
trousers, manipulated like a puppet by an unseen hand
in the air; that he only obeyed the laws of gravitation
by the greatest physical exertion; he looked as if he
were always on the point of floating off into the heav-
ens hips first.
Mrs. Harris, Mrs. Field and Mrs. Partridge sat
apart from the rest of the group around the fire. They
were not themselves for the time, but creatures doing
a social stunt. Mrs. Field was doing an act called,
"The Mother of a Beauty"; Mrs. Partridge, "Those
brutal men shall not molest my darling," and Mrs.
Harris was saying,
"I live with my children as if each were the heroine
of a story. I wonder what will happen next in that
wonderful way which makes life so abundantly worth
living. They have all been to me very sweet, deli-
ciously human little stories, continuing in daily instal-
ments before my very eyes. I smile and weep with
them"
Lap, lap, lap, said the water to the shore.
II
Ward was the center of the younger group. Through
her good-nature Helene Patridge and Mary Field were
drawn into the chatter. Ward was an adept in the
graceful and romantic art of allurement, which more
powerfully than any other touches in youth the sense
of mystery.
And for her Roderick Preston conjured his pleasant
bag of tricks like colored missiles kept afloat. He
20 THE LOVE LEGEND
talked well; he had a manner; a way; an ardor in his
hopeful pursuit. At times he was like that aristocratic
and offish dog, the collie. He hung on Ward's lightest
word. His eyes followed her. If she smiled his tall
lithe body shook with delight as if in the absence of a
tail he was doing the best he could. If she frowned
he shrunk and seemed to regret an inability to put a
tail between his legs. If any other male spoke to her
he seemed ready to jump at his throat. He was not
only handsome and clean looking and young, but he
seemed to set Ward off and she seemed to set him off,
as if an abstract idea of beauty would inevitably make
them realize the necessity of each for the other.
Mr. Wicker hung about, quite unable to get his
usual stock conversation in with Ward. This conver-
sation was known among his friends as Mr. Wicker's
line, and the "way he worked." He turned with it at
last to Sari, who was being besieged by the atten-
tions of Frankie Field.
"That's a wonderful color you're wearing," said
Wicker, "somehow it suits you."
"Oh do you think so," said Sari delighted by his
emotional tone, and playing up to it without hesita-
tion. "Most people haven't the sense to appreciate
color or me "
III
Nita and Howard Blackton sat together.
They very soon discovered that their ideas coin-
cided in a great many ways. They found, almost at
once, that they both received stimulation from the
editorials of Dr. Frank Crane; both thought that O.
Henry was the greatest short story writer that ever
lived; that it was immoral to read Guy de Maupas-
THE LOVE LEGEND 21
sant; that there was too much sex stuff written; that
all literature that had sex in it was trashy; that any
young person who determined to make a success early
in life was bound to win out if he worked hard and
stuck to his business; that a truly American type was
the most admirable; that real honest to goodness men
from the west never dressed for dinner when they
came east, but appeared at banquets among din-
ner coated beings in tweed suits with large gold
watch chains strung across them; that they were re-
spected far more than underlings who donned tuxedoes
and pretended to be accustomed to them.
Howard said, "I've an uncle in St. Paul. He's a
pretty big fellow up there with the Eau Claire and
Mankato railroad. When he goes down to New York
he meets all the biggest men in the country. But he
never even takes evening clothes with him. I'll tell
you a really big man can get away with that sort of
thing"
"It's because he's big he can do it," said Anita.
"Yeh. That's it. Now you take some of these lit-
tle fellows, they don't dare do a thing like that. But
if a man has lots of money and is known as a big man,
why people don't care what he does."
"That's what is so wonderful about America. It's
so different from other countries. Now that could
never happen in England."
They were both silent, possibly thinking sadly of
England's horrible caste system.
"That's what I want to be," said Howard softly.
"So big that I can do what I darn please."
"What would you do?"
"You mean if I had money?"
"No, if you were a really big man arrived, I
mean."
22 THE LOVE LEGEND
"Oh, I don't know. Golf, and tennis, and swim a lot
and ride. I like to ride, don't you?"
"Yes," said Nita, who didn't care to admit that she
had never been on a horse.
"I like big people," went on Howard. "Now my
pal at college is sure to be the right sort. His father
has an estate on the Riviera right next to the former
governor of New York. Week ends, he used to leave
college and play with America's upper crust, and back
at school for five days he was perfectly simple,
friendly with every one, and never mentioned the con-
trast of the other side of his life."
Nita, too, thought this was very wonderful of the
young man.
In the minds of both of them romance reached its
apex in these two incidents. The prince disguised as
the pauper, hobnobbing with the pauper. It was
what they called democracy romantic democracy.
IV
Helene Partridge felt Wicker's gaze upon her, pene-
trating yet caressing. She had been warned against
him. There was something attractive in his browned
face with the hair curling back from the forehead.
"That orange colored sweater just suits you," he
said in an undertone. "You ought always to wear
that shade. In the firelight " his voice drifted off,
leaving her to infer the sentiment about the firelight.
He threw himself forward and leaned upon his elbow
in the sand to be near her.
Helene was not beautiful but she could be interest-
ing. She gave herself the airs of the legendary,
sought-after beauty who must continually rebuff the
encroaching male with light sarcasm and badinage of
THE LOVE LEGEND 23
an uncomplimentary nature. She knew men thor-
oughly in books but she was so ignorant of them
in real life that an ordinary, chance remark from one
of them was often interpreted by her and resented as
unspeakable lewdness. Men were creatures to whom
the mysteries of life were all bare; experienced and
ever watchful, to entrap foolish young girls. This at-
titude of mind made her ill at ease with young men
without interfering with her ambition to be attractive
to them.
"Yes," pursued Wicker, his eyes on the fire. "That
color just suits your type. You're a different sort of
type. You know you are."
"In what way?" asked Helene.
Wicker gave her a glance. "You know what I
mean," he told her. She didn't, but she was afraid
to seem to disappoint his expectations of her.
"No, I am sort of different," she admitted, without
humor. "People expect me to conform to their stand-
ards. I can't " She rambled on while Wicker won-
dered if he had really made an impression on her.
By the time an opening came for his remark about his
being a lonesome sort of a chap, he was sure of her
interest. She was touched, thinking of her mother's
misjudgment of him, wondering if he would ask to
call.
Sari left the party and strolled along the lake in the
darkness. On the sands by herself she began to
dance, flinging herself about, flirting with the quiet
waters, abandoning herself furiously to the night.
Suddenly she found herself in a man's arms.
"Oh, Jasper, forgive me. I didn't mean it that night
24 THE LOVE LEGEND
on the launch. It was the moonlight! I never
dreamed you would take it like this!"
Bill Wicker dropped his arms. "I'm not Jasper,"
he said, unimaginatively.
Sari stiffened. "Not Jasper? . . . Really, War-
ren, this is too much. I've forgiven a lot in you but
this is the last straw to come upon me in the dark-
ness, when I said our little affair was over. I meant
it, and"
The dull wit of Wicker was still dormant. He said,
frigidly, "You are mistaken again."
Sari, intoxicated with the success of her role, came
forward and put her hands on his shoulders. "Dear-
est," she murmured, "Dearest Edwin "
But before Bill could accept the role of Edwin, she
was off, running back to the fire, flushed and elated.
Wicker, at least, would fancy her a worse vamp than
Ward.
VI
On the way to the house Wicker found himself be-
side Mary Field. "Yellow is just your color," he said
in a low tone. "How well you know what to wear. I
should like to see you in yellow all the time."
"Oh, thank you," said Mary, conventionally. She
always played to keep young men in their proper place.
Like Helene, she was forever on the lookout for them
to do something improper, but lacked Helene's imag-
ination of the horrors they might perpetrate.
"The sight of you by the fire tonight has meant a
lot to me," went on Wicker. "I'm a lonesome sort of
a chap, and beauty means well, it means "
"I know what it means to be alone in a strange
town," said Mary, who had no notion at all, as she
THE LOVE LEGEND 25
had seldom been away from home over night without
some member of the family. The conversation drib-
bled along
VII
"Let's run along by the lake before we go up to
the house," said Sari to Frankie Field.
They raced like the children they were, beside the
water.
"Say, Sari, I want to ask you something," said
Frankie when they paused for breath.
"Ask away."
"Do you believe that Well, do you think?" he
paused and gulped. "What do you believe "
"Yes," encouraged Sari, poised on the point of sar-
casm, but refraining through an instinct that sym-
pathy would be more flattering ultimately.
"Sari, do you believe that if young people are in
love when they can't well, you know get married
for years, that a man ought to well propose or
that they ought to go on just being friends?"
"I think they ought to be engaged if they are really
in love," she said phrasing in her mind the form of
her rejection of him.
"Well, I don't," said Frankie. "I think a man that
really loved a girl would wait until he was in a posi-
tion to support a wife before he asked her."
In keen disappointment Sari turned back to the
house.
"It's getting pretty late. I think we'd better go
home."
CHAPTER IV
I
AMONG the intricacies of the sex mystery there is
perhaps no more interesting question to the young
woman than the one: Why do some women inspire love
in man after man, while others are unable to evoke
the phenomenon in a single male? Each one
of the four young Harris sisters had her private an-
swer which she kept more or less to herself. With
the certainty of youth, each knew that the solution
was easy. Mysticism, thought Nita. Morals, thought
Ward. Chemistry, thought Dizzy. Wiles, tricks, an
art that anybody can learn, thought Sari.
After a party it was the amiable custom of these
four to foregather in nightgowns to discuss the short-
comings of the individuals with whom they had been;
and also sagely to give utterance to whatever philos-
ophy came into their heads as they talked.
They sat crosslegged on the bed like four little girls
on a pavement playing jacks.
"The Wicker complex!" said Sari
They laughed. The figure of Wicker was to all of
them ridiculous. Another comically misshapen char-
acter in which they could rejoice.
"The oldest line I've ever heard anyone pull," went
on Sari. "In three parts number one, that color
thrills me to death, number two, you seem so different,
you wonderful little girl "
"He certainly has a soft spot," said Nita. Nita had
classified all human beings under two heads: those
26
THE LOVE LEGEND 27
with, and those without soft spots. She observed this
soft spot in all men art students, in girls who didn't
make clubs at college, in most girls who confided their
love affairs to her, in unsuccessful people. Helene
Partridge's soft spot was her delusion that men were
planning to commit some horrible crime against her
person. Mary Field's was her stupidity. Mrs. Part-
ridge's soft spot was her belief in the Don Juan capa-
bilities of such men as Wicker. But these faults
alone were not soft spots so much as they were the
visible effects of the soft spots. Most successful, well
balanced, well dressed people, were in the other class.
Howard Blackton and Roderick Preston did not have
soft spots. They were personable, agreeable young
men, bound straight for success, with no ideas in their
heads that had not been put there in academies of
learning. They were distinctly worth while, distinctly
eligible. "Real men." Rod for Ward and Howard
for her.
"Roderick Preston seemed like a nice chap, I didn't
talk to him much though," she said.
"He is," said Ward. "He's a peach. I felt sort of
sorry for him, though. He was telling me about the
hard time he had at boarding school. Nobody under-
stood him, he's so sensitive "
"She's sorry for the Preston person! Curses!
Curses! Hasn't he got no matrimonial prospects?"
asked Sari.
Dizzy, who was not interested in diagnosing reac-
tions to boys, said suddenly, "Sometimes I think
mother is demented. About religion, I mean. Com-
ing up to the house from the beach she and Mrs.
Partridge talked about some spiritual quality that
most everybody but Ward lacks, as far as I could
gather. Ward's spiritual as the dickens, Mrs. Par-
28 THE LOVE LEGEND
tridge says. Mother ate it up. She simply loved it.
And then Mrs. Partridge shook her head and sighed
and said that Ward would have to suffer for it. Mother
sighed and said she feared so, too."
"Nut-tay!" Sari's slangy and meaningless com-
ments emphasized her pleasant agreements and dis-
agreements, both quite without thought. She was
unoccupied with problems.
Nita opened her eyes wide. She said: "I've felt
that about Ward in a dim sort of way. She's got a
genius at being herself, or something. It's all vague
in my mind. She has no definite religion, and yet,
she's the religious type. I can sort of imagine her in
a cloister "
Sari tumbled backward and stifled her shrieks of
laughter in the pillows. "Cloister, my eye. Ward in
a cock-eyed cloister!"
"The man-hunting type, you mean," said Dizzy.
"I don't hunt men," said Ward, indignantly.
"Oh, yes," Dizzy went on, choking with laughter,
brought on by Sari's appreciation. "Another thing
that mother said was that this spiritual quality was
what made Ward so popular with men."
"That's awfully interesting," said Nita, inspired.
The idea was to her like one of those enormous mallets
which huge and knotty-jointed men raise in the air
and pound down on a machine designed for the pur-
pose of registering their physical strength. Down,
pounded the idea, up, shot the pointing finger up
and up, past Bruce Barton, past Dr. Frank Crane,
past Orison Swett Madson, up almost to Mrs. Eddy.
"I've often thought about that myself. What is it
about Ward that makes men like her? That's it.
Dizzy, you can talk all you want about Ward's vampi-
THE LOVE LEGEND 29
ness. It's the natural result of a child of your age
reading Man and Superman, I suppose "
"Don't tell me," said Dizzy, who was too enter-
tained to take offense. "She's Theda Bara, upside
down and inside out. She knows it, too. She knows
all about men. She has known from the cradle. She
can slant her eyes, or cast them down, just so to suit
any type, and she does it with ease and without giving
any more thought to it than I do to chewing prunes.
If she sees a fat man with a glass eye, she subcon-
sciously takes out the wile labeled, 'For fat men with
glass eyes,' and flips it at him without even thinking
about it"
"That's just it. She does it unconsciously and be-
cause she was born that way; that's just the question.
Why weren't we all born that way? I couldn't be a
vamp if I tried." This from Nita.
"I could," declared Dizzy. "Some day when I
have time I'll do it just to show you. You bring on a
couple of men and I'll twist up my hair and make them
fall with a couple of the oldest tricks in the basket "
"It's easy," interrupted Sari. "I've done it." T
"Oh, well, pooh!" said Nita. "You silly kids! If
you call having boys like you, or making an occasional
man take to you if you call that vamping! I mean
having them fall in wholesale droves, like Ward did
at college. Every girl thinks she could be a vamp if
she wanted to, but as a matter of fact, there are very
few girls that are able to rope in two or three, much
less a herd. Most girls strike attitudes, like Helene
Partridge, and pretend they are too sweet and pure to
attract a man. Ward is different. It's something in-
side of her. I know it is."
She was thinking, "It is the most desirable thing in
the world to be beautiful and fascinating to be loved
30 THE LOVE LEGEND
and admired for personal qualities. If it comes from
within, I can get it. Christian Science. Why not?"
II
This, too, was the essence of Ward's ambition, but
Ward was quite unable to accept the gift she had of
stirring love and admiration. Instead she was har-
assed by the thought that she must have an aim; she
must be unselfish, useful, a model for the younger
sisters otherwise this prince of her mother's tale
would ride on to make some more virtuous maiden
his lawful princess. This fear had made her believe
that what she desired to arouse passion for was a set
of abstract virtues, all of which have never been as-
sembled in one person. What she really wanted was
to stir the emotion of adoration for herself in every-
body, and particularly, in a future mate she wanted
to stir it anyhow, anyway, only to stir it. And she
had been convinced by the propaganda of the love
legend, that nobility of character would do the job.
Ergo, she desired to be noble.
Thus, she deceived herself, and deceiving herself,
was unhappy, for she was essentially honest and would
have admitted, quite humbly, any shortcomings in her-
self that she could have been made to see. The faults
of which she was conscious she earnestly strove to
overcome. She demanded perfection in herself that
she might be fit for her wonderful husband.
At the age of thirteen, she had found her ideal in
the "Little Colonel" books, a series of stories for girls
in which a young southern miss suffers conscientious
scruples about her admirers through ten volumes. All
her love problems are met with a quotation from a
Victorian poet, given in an idealized darky dialect.
THE LOVE LEGEND 31
Ward, too, had found quotations to fit her problems.
As she grew older she saw herself in every magazine
heroine, especially those by writers who habitually
declare in full page advertisements that they desire to
fill their readers with the sense that the world is bet-
ter than it is; that human nature is after all, over-
flowing with goodness; that the difficulties of life can
all be met thus: (1) with sunshine in the heart, (2)
with a fitting quotation on the lips.
Ward, then, was an almost perfect example of what
is called a high-minded girl. She was not, like Nita,
an egotist with second-rate ideals who screened her
aims behind current notions of propriety. Neither was
she like Sari, careless of right and wrong. Nor did
she have the skeptical cock-surety of Dizzy, who
rejected the sentiments that held Ward with such
rainbow bands.
CHAPTER Y
I
MORNING.
Rose Mrs. Harris freighted, as always, with the
importance of being a mother, subtly conveying in
walk, manner, tone, even in her first meeting with
her own eyes in the mirror her conviction that the
early bird catches the worm.
Nita got up. Ward got up. The woman Olive
dragged herself out of bed and down into the kitchen
where she hindered Ward in getting breakfast. It
was part of Ward's conception of herself to take work
from her mother's shoulders. Olive, nearly incapaci-
tated by feeble-mindedness, was a mere symbol of a
housemaid.
Sari appeared, unexpectedly, while they were eat-
ing breakfast. Usually she rose later than the rest
of the family. "Might as well ride down with you
Nita," she said casually. "Got to shop before my les-
son."
When they had hurried off with the brisk import-
ance of an early morning departure, Dizzy went up to
the room she shared with Sari, closed the door care-
fully and sat down to her desk to study.
College in the fall! College! It was a thrilling
possibility. She began tracing with a pencil on a sheet
of paper on which she had written:
32
THE LOVE LEGEND 33
Required Covered
4 years English 3
2 years history 2
1 and Y-2. year French
2 years science 2
2 l /2 years mathematics 2
3 years Latin 3
15 credits required 12
for college entrance.
credits
covered
Exams
4th year English
l]/2 years French
y 2 year solid geometry
3 Examinations.
She was not sure that the requirements were cor-
rect. She had written to the University of Illinois to
find out if they would accept her. She sat looking
over the requirements and thinking about them. She
was suspicious of the fourth-year English course. It
was too easy. Perhaps they wouldn't accept an exam-
ination for it. She might arrange to take a short sum-
mer course. She was confident that she could master
solid geometry. Plane had been easy enough. And
as for French, she could read it quite easily. She had
no fear of failing in that after a little study of the
grammar. Fortunately she had the required amount
of science.
Dizzy had an extraordinarily quick and adaptable
mind, an immense capacity for work, and like her
sisters, a pulling, drawing ambition. As naively sure
that she could acquire all knowledge, as Ward was
that the prince was on the way, Dizzy had made up
34 THE LOVE LEGEND
her mind to finish college knowing everything by the
time she was twenty. Then she would begin to write
books.
She wished that her mother could be brought to see
how important it was. If only she could have a tutor.
Mother was so dense about things like that. Now, if
only father had been alive he would have been so
proud to have her trying to get into college before her
class. He would have tutored her himself. He would
have found out all about it for her and might even
have been able to get her into the University of Chi-
cago. Father had always understood her so well.
No one would ever know how much she had lost in
losing him so early in life. If she had only been Anita
and could have known him until she was eighteen.
None of the rest of the family appreciated him or
loved him as she did.
II
Sari and Nita sat on the suburban train staring
gravely at nothing. They were jolted like moulds of
jelly carried on a tray by a hurrying waiter. Through
the dingy train window the dazzling silver cloth of the
lake met the baby blue satin sky. In their mouths
was the faintly nauseating taste of hot, unstirred in-
door air, smelling of oil, steam and loathsome chemicals
meant to purify it. The unbearable roar of wheels
stifled thought like the beating of blood in the ears
during a high fever.
"The dear old first of August!" said Sari.
"What about it?"
"Something rather good is going to happen. By
the way, Parkman, Jones Parkman is going to watch
the Carlotta Wilson dancers at the studio today.
THE LOVE LEGEND 35
Maybe they'll get a New York engagement this win-
ter."
"Wait until mother finds out that Carlotta Wilson
is a professional. Just wait. Who is Jones Park-
man?"
"Jones Parkman? The cock-eyed Jones Parkman?
Haven't you ever heard of him? Oh well, he's not so
much. He's no Ziegfeld "
Nita's eyebrows asked superciliously, "the same sort
of thing?" She said: "I hope you don't think you're
going to be one of the Carlotta Wilson dancers. Of
course she promises all her pupils that she'll take
them in to her company if they are good enough. That's
the catch. It takes years and years of training before
you are good enough, and in the meantime you've
given up and married, or started to teach school or
something. She just trades on her professional posi-
tion to get flappers like you to think she'll put them
on the stage."
Sari said nothing, but smiled mysteriously to her-
self. She was already training with the Wilson dan-
cers. She was not greatly excited by the advent of
Parkman. For the present the Chicago engagement
to be staged at one of the more pretentious north side
hotels was enough to feed her secret dreams.
Ill
She left Nita at Van Buren and Michigan streets,
and hurried off down the boulevard. She assumed an
important expression. Sari had studiously molded
her whole carriage into showing a pre-occupation with
large inner affairs, an aloofness, a blankness that was
pregnant with meaning. A thrust of shoulders, a lift
36 THE LOVE LEGEND
of head, a wiping away of vividness from the face, and
the thing was done. Sari, in company with hundreds
of other young whippersnappers, walked haughtily
down the avenue, shrieking their consciousness that
they were being stared at by lounging men in their
carefully assumed expression of unconsciousness.
Jones Parkman was a short stocky Scotchman, just
past fifty, one of those wistful sporting souls who is
always on the point of bringing out something more
splendid than the Follies, but who, unhappily, nearly
always misses what he calls his big chance. He had
eyes as blue as the lake had been that morning, and
with some of the same inscrutability as the water.
As the Carlotta Wilson dancers went through their
numbers for him, Sari was conscious that he looked
at her a good bit. When the dance was finished, and
while they still stood about in groups in their dancing
costumes, Carlotta Wilson was called to the telephone.
Sari moved off by herself over to a bar and took hold
of it with some hazy idea that Jones Parkman might
come over and offer to make her a star at once.
He approached her.
Behind his eyes something seemed to ebb and flow
endlessly. As she looked at him his gaze seemed to
swell and envelope her with the sense of the lake
around her, then to shrink until his eyes were two
steel-blue spurts from a faucet.
"You dance well," he said.
"Oh," said Sari quickly, "I'm no dancer. I'm an
actress essentially. I regard dancing as the truest way
of feeling art. When I have dissolved the essence in
my soul I shall express it on the speaking stage!"
"My God, girl," said Parkman, who was approxi-
mately Sari's age mentally. "You're interesting!"
His eye pupils shrunk as if he had come suddenly into
light.
THE LOVE LEGEND 3<C
He said no more as Carlotta Wilson came back, but
before he left he managed to command Sari to meet
him for luncheon in the Congress Hotel at one.
Sari's pulses leaped up. Press agent stories of
actresses made over night, always in the background
of her mind, came forward now, and combined excit-
ingly with the Lakeshore Women's Club theory that
the actress leads a life of shame. She wondered if
she dared meet him, and knew that she would in the
same skeptical thought picture that she saw of herself
being brutally attacked.
"He's awfully fatherly, somehow," thought Sari as
she leaned toward the mirror, patting the powder puff
on her nose. "Anyway he can't do anything to me at
luncheon."
IV
Across the table from him she answered his ques-
tions at random, truthfully or imaginatively as she
preferred.
"How old are you?"
"Eighteen!"
"Family in Chicago?"
"Oh, yes."
"Tell me about them."
"I must support my mother who is a widow and my
two sisters "
He began to absorb her eyes with his misty blue
ones.
"What sort of parts would you like to do?"
"I'd like to do Shaw!" This was Sari's conception
of the sophisticated intellectual thing to say. Jones
Parkman smiled patronizingly, saying nothing. With
his coffee and cigarettes he said,
38 THE LOVE LEGEND
"I could give you a chance to understudy in a play
I am putting on in New York. I might even get you
a chance to play it in a road company later. And the
year after well Broadway, perhaps, who knows!
Yes, I think in two years I could have you on Broad-
way."
Sari choked. It was unbelievable. Was she
dreaming! "Oh," she said with her first genuine sin-
cerity, "you're so good to me. How can I ever repay
you."
Jones Parkman smiled, a far-away smile.
"By working hard. My people work for me and love
me. Then after a while, they become great artists.
This is the only reward I seek."
He pressed her hand. She pressed his warmly, he
was so fatherly. And yet, she was not deceived, ex-
cept on the top layer of her mind that wanted to be
deceived. He looked into her eyes, smiling tenderly.
"So she likes Shaw." He shook his head. "Could
that soft, curved mouth utter those sarcasms, jibes at
humanity?" He thought it over, and decided that
Sari's lips could never be the medium for Mr. Shaw,
whose lines, it chanced, he had never read. "No, no!
Ah, you have so much to learn, my little child, my lit-
tle Sari, so much to learn!"
"But you will teach me," said Sari deliberately
allowing herself to be moved, and enjoying it
deliciously.
He re-clasped the hand lying under his.
"It's possible that I might be able to introduce a
dance for you in the third act. Would you like that?"
"Oh," Sari saw herself on Broadway. She was
really grateful, exhilarated. "Oh! you're wonderful !"
"Could you work up a dance?" His voice was a
little thick.
THE LOVE LEGEND 39
!
"Oh, yes, I have a dance I wish I could show you.
It might do?"
"Where could we go? I should like to see it."
"Up to the studio, of course."
"Oh, no."
"Miss Wilson leaves at 2:30, if I phone her, she
would let me use it this afternoon."
"Well, that might do. Tell you. I've some busi-
ness to attend to. I'll meet you up there at three if
you can fix it with Miss Wilson. I'd rather not have
her know, if you don't mind, as I am making different
arrangements with her for the present."
At three he found Sari in the studio in her practice
costume. Followed a scene to draw confirmatory nods
from those believers in the love legend who lay stress
on its hackneyed by-products.
Sari adjusted the needle on a record.
"My God, but you're beautiful!"
Far back in Sari's mind satisfaction registered. A
man had said to her my-god-you-are-beautiful.
When she had danced through the record, Parkman
drew her down beside him.
"You're tired! Here! Put up your feet!" He
drew a second chair but Sari demurred. "My God,
don't you feel at ease with me?"
She smiled into his eyes.
"You're tired, aren't you. You know you're charm-
ing." He leaned forward to put his hand on her
shoulder. "You're going to work hard for me. And,
and I'm going to make you the greatest actress in the
world."
40 THE LOVE LEGEND
He was as much the dupe of melodrama as Ward,
Mrs. Harris or Mrs. Partridge, who would have been
filled with horror if they had known of the situation.
This man's strained interest in her was novel, interest-
ing to Sari. A sense of triumph over her mother filled
her mind as she looked at the legendary enemy of
young girls, who was frowning thoughtfully.
"You need a little more leg work, I think."
"Yes! I do these exercises every day!" She sprang
to her feet, ran away from him to the bar, and began
going through a few motions. He followed her across
the room.
"Sari, dear," he said gently. "You're not a child.
You know what life is?"
Sari considered. Would it be best to pretend com-
plete innocence?
"Yes," she admitted, slowly.
"Well, dear girl, there is one difficult thing about
acting. And that is that you must know life before
you can interpret it. There are certain things you
will have to learn. You see you're just a child now,
wholly unawakened. You remember what you said
about feeling through dancing? Well, there is a
much greater way of feeling art, and that is through
love."
"Yes," said Sari, making a jump, playing the child
and hippety-hopping across the room to the victrola.
She put on a record, presumably to amuse him, and
left the room calling that she would be back in a mo-
ment. She was out of the dressing room in her street
clothes in three minutes, saying as she looked at her
wrist watch, "Gracious, I've got to go. I promised to
meet my sister at four."
He crossed the room and embraced her. "I must
see you again today. Will you have dinner with me?"
THE LOVE LEGEND 41
"Yes," said Sari, "only I must go now, this minute."
She walked toward the door, his arm around her. He
was breathing heavily, his mouth close to her neck.
"Fate is so wonderful," said Jones Parkman. "Only
think, this morning we didn't know each other."
"Yes," murmured Sari.
He turned her head and fixed his eyes on her. Sari
stared back, a guileless, wileless gaze, thinking, the
cock-eyed idiot, the cock-eyed idiot, he can't get any
power over me if he stares in my eyes all day. But
the strain was telling on her. A little muscle at the
corner of her mouth gave a twitch.
He laughed triumphantly, and folded her in his
arms. Sari did not move though the kiss was long,
and very unpleasant. Her hand was on the doorknob.
When his hold relaxed, and he was bracing his
mind for another bit of sentimentality, Sari opened
the door, and stepped gaily out, laughing. This was
a real bit of acting, as she was horribly nauseated.
"See you at seven," she called.
"At the Congress," he shouted down the hall after
her, smiling, waving, comic.
She ran on down toward the elevators.
VI
When she got to the street she ran, losing herself in
the crowds, powdering herself with people of day-
light, hurrying, wholesome people. All at once she
realized that she had left her purse in the studio. She
felt in her pockets, just ten cents. It would get her
home slowly on the street cars. She went into a drug
store.
"I've only ten cents," she told a white-robed clerk,
"but I'd like an antiseptic mouth wash."
"Sore throat?" asked the sympathetic boy.
42 THE LOVE LEGEND
"Yes." He gave her a small bottle and she hurried
to a department store. Over a wash bowl she swished
the gargle back and forth, through her teeth, and
poured the rest down the drain. Then she hunted up
Nita and went home to a hot bath and bed. She
couldn't face the family talk at dinner. Her mother
came and sat beside her, feeling a futile wish to com-
municate with Sari, to help her, but Sari refused all
offers of supper, cold cloths on her head, companion-
ship.
She turned and tossed on the bed, writhing, and
stronger and stronger, as the hours separating her from
the incident grew, she felt the hand of Parkman on
her . . . .his kiss . . Toward dawn, she slept
clinging to Dizzy's unconscious form.
CHAPTER VI
AT SEVEN, Ward made her daily pilgrimage to the
water's edge. The old black pier was a ragged road-
way over the blue still lake, bright and calm with the
soothing vigor of size and strength. She picked her
way carefully to the end of it over perilous boards
placed there by neighborhood fishing men. The sun
had dropped behind the green foliage on the shore.
In the foreground the aureate sands were soft like new-
fallen snow. In such a setting the love legend might
unfold.
Roderick Preston, bathed and dressed in white after
a grimy day at the steel mills, was drawn to the beach
by a vague undefined hope of seeing her. He came to
her over the flimsy board path, and they rather breath-
lessly watched the sun spread a gauze of pink and
gold over the turquoise blue between them and the
shore. They were stirred, not so much by the shim-
mering and silent beauty, as with the consciousness of
themselves at the colored heart of it. Ward looked
at Rod and felt his joyous, youthful charm. She felt
her youth, her charm, her beauty, too. Their talk
was decorated with the happy meeting of their eyes.
II
Nita at this minute was strolling leisurely down the
boulevard to the home of Mrs. Paul de Remy, who
called herself a Christian Science practitioner, though
43
44 THE LOVE LEGEND
her church did not recognize her as one. The familiar
principle of mysticism that concentration through
prayer is able to bring about definite material results
had been grasped by Mrs. de Remy's feeble intellec-
tual machine. She called it working in science, and
understanding that certain things which she desired
were about to come to pass. She did not so much en-
deavor to heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out de-
mons and cleanse the leper, which is the ideal and aim
of the sincere practitioner in his religion, as she tried
to heal sick purses, raise dead loves, and cast out de-
mons in the shape of "animal" natures which did not
believe in "science."
"Oh, good evening, dear, I'm so happy to see you,"
her voice lilted as she saw Anita coming up the walk.
"Isn't this a lovely evening? I'm always so happy on
nights like this."
She was a pretty little woman of forty, slim, rose-
complexioned, who looked ten years younger. She
lived in a small bungalow with her only child, a boy
of twelve, who "worked in Science every morning (it
was too cute for anything) to gain dominion over
error," typified in his alert young mind by his teach-
ers and the gang at school. Her husband existed
vaguely, sometimes in the south, and sometimes in the
east. He had a very dark thought, she confided in
Nita, and was very much the animal type. And he
was opposed to Science, and so she had been compelled
to give him up.
Twenty-two or three years before, a young boy of
nineteen, who was studying to be an artist, had en-
treated her to marry him, and on her refusal had trag-
ically gone off to New York and become a well known
sketcher of comic pictures. Mrs. de Remy had fol-
lowed his private adventures with some difficulty
THE LOVE LEGEND 45
through paragraphs in the newspapers, and through
one interview with him which she had obtained after
considerable trouble about five years before when she
was in New York. She now was "working in science"
to know that she would be released from Mr. de Remy
in order to marry Mr. Murphy, the cartoonist. Mr.
Murphy, being burdened with one wife, his third,
knew nothing of this romantic scheme of Mrs. de
Remy. Nita sometimes suspected that he might even
have forgotten his declaration at the age of nineteen
that Mrs. de Remy had ruined his life. She never
hinted this to Mrs. de Remy, who was trying to "un-
derstand" that God would arrange everything.
It was Mrs. de Remy who had first suggested to
Nita that God would help her in finding a husband.
"We'll just know that God is your husband," Mrs.
de Remy had said in her soft, clear, even tones, "and
then you can't make a mistake. You are bound to
get the right one. I'll work for you, dear. I'll work
to know that you will meet the right one, and then it's
sure to come right."
This "working" of Mrs. de Remy's had so far re-
sulted in two definite material things; a new pair of
very smart shoes for Master Paul de Remy, and the
appearance on the scene of Mr. Howard Blackton.
As soon as preliminaries were over Nita hastened
to tell Mrs. de Remy about the meeting.
"And he seems like the right one, does he," said
Mrs. de Remy, a little sympathetic laugh in her voice.
"We must work to know that he is the right one. I
suppose he has lots of money?"
Nita replied a little coldly. Mrs. de Remy had
talked about money to her before. It jarred. "I
don't know."
46 THE LOVE LEGEND
"Well, you must find out. Men have absolutely no
principles. I would never have been married to Mr.
de Remy today if I had been a little wiser about those
things. We have to be careful, because men will lie.
I thought that Mr. de Remy was wealthy before we
married. He had a car, and a home, both good-look-
ing, and he gave me wonderful presents. And his
business! Well, after we were married, I found that
his business was absolutely failing, and the house was
mortgaged it had to go, and the car wasn't paid for!"
Her mouth twisted itself into sullen lines as she re-
membered her awakening. But her gaze softened and
became benignant again as she put her mind on Nita's
affairs. "You won't make that mistake. You can
have him looked up in Dun's, you know."
"I don't care about his having money, anyway,"
said Nita.
"Oh, well, of course we know in Science that those
things are all really unnecessary as God is our supply,
but at the same time I think we ought to have a clear
understanding about all material things before mar-
riage, anyway. Did you ask him if he was interested
in Science?"
"No, I didn't ask him, but I'm pretty sure he isn't.
Don't you know, young men aren't very often."
"But he isn't opposed to it, is he?"
"Oh, I don't think so. He seems very normal, and
healthy as if he came from good stock, and he shows
good breeding, too. I think that's the main thing. He
seemed to sort of like me, I don't know. Most young
men fall for my sister Ward."
"And he didn't? Well, I think it's a demonstration,
I really do!" Her eyes became misty. She did not
mean to be unflattering.
"I don't think it matters about his having money,"
THE LOVE LEGEND 47
said Nita, hesitatingly. "I mean, if he hasn't any.
There is something about him that makes you know
he's going to be successful. He's got all the typical
American push and go. And I think that's what
counts."
"Yes, I do, too. That was just the way it was with
Tom Murphy. He said to me, if I'm not a success as
an artist, I'm going to get into something else, but
whatever I get into, I'm going to be a success. And
now he's got to be one of our foremost artists. You
could just feel as you say, that he would.
"Yes," said Nita hastily. She had heard about Tom
Murphy's great success before. Mrs. de Remy's igno-
rance of art was so great that it made even Nita
squirm to hear her talk about it. "Mr. Blackton seems
to be just the sort I want to marry."
"Well, dear, I'll work to know, then, that nothing
can come between you no error that is, and that you
are already married in divine love? You want me to
keep on working for you?"
"Oh, yes, if you will. Of course I work some myself,
but "
"But you feel that you need help. Yes, dear, I un-
derstand." Her voice was infinitely gentle. "Well,
dear, I'm expecting a patient soon. I'm so glad you
ran up to see me. Come up again tomorrow night,
and if you are worried about anything during the day,
just call me up."
Ill
Leaving Mrs. de Remy, Nita strolled slowly back
along the boulevard to make a call on Mary Field.
Dusk was coming down on the street like sober colored
confetti, motors buzzed by like bees, the round gold
48 THE LOVE LEGEND
heads of the street lamps rippled on with the wave-
like movement of a line of men seating themselves
rhythmically, one by one.
Bill Wicker was calling on Mary, Nita found. To
Mary this was the opening chapter of her love tale.
She was tense now in her effort to live up to the art-
less, girlish human that she conceived herself as being.
"This morning I was up at six to get breakfast for
father. Mother does not arise until a quarter to seven.
I had such a time frying the eggs. I was really very
clumsy. I broke the yolk of one. Wasn't that shock-
ing? Then after breakfast I did up the dishes. Mother
wiped them. She always helps me a little during the
day. Then I swept the living rooms and cleaned the
windows. I love cleaning, don't you? Then it was
lunch time and I got luncheon for my little sister and
my "
Nita made her escape as soon as possible and went
to find Helene Partridge. "Ye fishes ! Something revo-
lutionary has happened," she announced to Helene.
"Little Bill Wicker is calling on the Village Beauty!"
"Good Lord, haven't men queer taste?" demanded
Helene fiercely. "You know he tried to make up to
me last night, but Good Heavens, I thought he was
a jokel"
CHAPTER VII
I
It was several weeks before Nita saw Mrs. de Remy
again. She had no more need of "treatments." Then
one hot afternoon, late in July, it chanced that they
took the same homeward-bound train from town.
"Isn't this lucky. I'm so glad. I hate this long
ride alone, don't you?" was Mrs. de Remy's greeting.
"How have you been getting along? You haven't been
over for some time. I do miss our little visits."
Mrs. de Remy wondered if Nita was still interested
in young Mr. Blackton.
"Oh, yes," Nita laughed. She had a laughing look
that was deprecating, like the expression of a puppy
caught on the dinner table a naughty look, charm-
ing, that seemed to say doggedly, frankly, "I know
this is against my pretensions, but you have suspected
me all along, haven't you?"
"Have you seen him lately?" Mrs. de Remy
achieved intimacy in her tone.
"Yes, I saw him yesterday. He had on white flan-
nels. He looks quite beautiful in white flannels. His
looks are so changeable. I believe it is the boy and
the man in him. Sometimes he looks kind of round-
faced and sweet, and then I don't like his looks at all.
And then he looks hard and quite a picture type. You
know what a respecter of looks I am. My tender
sentiments fluctuate as I like How's looks or don't."
"It's the artist in you," said Mrs. de Remy. She
attributed most of Nita's qualities to the genius she
49
50 THE LOVE LEGEND
believed Nita to possess. For some obscure reason
she longed to shine as a patroness of the arts, and she
passionately admired Nita's commonplace drawings.
Nita was too smart not to know that Mrs. de Remy
was a fool. She had a low opinion of Mrs. de Remy's
powers of reasoning, but had a sort of attachment for
her on account of what she called her spiritual in-
sight.
Nita was her only confidant in Lakeshore concern-
ing the animality of Mr. de Remy, and her love for
Tom Murphy.
II
"Do you think there is any sign that Mr. Blackton
has responded any to the treatments?"
Nita laughed. "That sounds so funny," she said
with some embarrassment.
"Well, of course, we're not treating him. That
would be error, of course. I'm only just working to
know that God is your husband, and if he's the right
one he's bound to respond to this. Have you noticed
anything?"
"He walks by the house every night that he doesn't
come over to see me," she said, laughing. "That shows
some interest, don't you think? He just strolls by in
a sort of casual off-hand way. I'm usually sitting on
the porch, so I see him about every night."
"Isn't that splendid? Really, I think it's a dem-
onstration. Has he proposed or said anything about
marriage?"
"No," said Nita, uncomfortable under this frank
question. "He treats me as if I were his sister. I
don't know why he doesn't make love to me. Of
course I'm glad he doesn't. I hate all this mushiness.
THE LOVE LEGEND 51
Roderick Preston is madly in love with Ward. He
acts like a perfect slave. But then men always act
that way to Ward."
"Never you mind, dear, I have a feeling a sort of
intuition. We practitioners do get these intuitions at
times, you know that he will propose very soon. I'm
going to work for you a little while now."
Ill
Mrs. de Remy got off at the station before Anita's
and so Anita was left on the train alone for a few min-
utes. Mrs. de Remy always did inspire her with a
thought that she would be successful in whatever she
was undertaking. That was her charm for Anita.
That was the charm of Christian Science. Nita began
to concentrate; in the phraseology of Mrs. de Remy,
she began to know that she would see Howard that
evening. She had missed him the night before.
As she stepped from the train, hot and dusty, Lake-
shore was cool and caressing a soothing open coun-
try after the clatter of the Loop and the roar of the
train. At the foot of the street in a small car sat
Howard Blackton, blushing and looking sheepish.
Nita hurried to him with the elated consciousness that
she had made a "demonstration."
"It's Wick's car. Belongs to his uncle or somebody.
It's loaned for a few weeks. Thought you might come
in on this train, and as I happened to be down this
way, wondered if you wouldn't like to go swimming
before dinner?"
Nita exclaimed her pleasure at the idea.
In the later afternoon sunlight the water was a
placid turquoise. They swam out to the end of the
52 THE LOVE LEGEND
pier and looked back. The water glimmered gold
around the shore to the west.
"It's a pity we can't see the fireworks from the
shore," said Nita, loving the cool water on her body.
"I don't know, it's sort of nice to have it rare like
this," was Howard's comment. He ducked beneath
the water as if frightened at his own tremendous
poetry of feeling.
Nita felt that it was a big moment. Of course. The
two of them seeing a scene of beauty together with no
one else there. It was like a story in a magazine. She
would like to paint a picture of it, but it was one of
those rare things which you simply couldn't put down
on paper. Nita frequently indulged herself in mo-
ments of sentimentality like this when there was no
possibility of its interference with her future plans.
IV
Sari, dainty and saucy-looking in a short organdy
dress of flame color, beckoned from the shore. Wicker
was standing beside her.
"Doesn't she look like a poster, with her bobbed
hair flying like that?" asked Nita.
"By jinks, she does," said Howard. "I haven't got
your artistic eye, and so I didn't think of it. She
looks mighty pretty, though."
He swam a few strokes, and then ventured to add
"Like the rest of her sisters."
Nita came to the shore in an excellent mood. How-
ard, feeling that he was becoming very adept in the
game of talking to women, also felt happy.
"Dinner's ready," said Sari, who had been snubbing
Wicker with great gusto.
"I've enjoyed my swim," said Nita, turning to How-
THE LOVE LEGEND 53
ard, who was coming up from the water with a stag-
gering step and shaking the water out of his ears.
"Oh, just a minute. There's one thing I'd like to
ask you."
They all paused and waited for Howard. He came
up slowly, and stood shifting his weight from one foot
to the other without saying anything.
"Well," said Sari, coldly, as Nita was regarding him
with no show of disfavor at this delay.
"I'm afraid I'm making a perfect nuisance of my-
self, but I was wondering whether I could come over
with Rod tonight. He tells me he is calling on Ward."
"Yes, do," said Nita. "I'll be glad to see you."
"May I come too?" said Wicker, looking at Sari.
"Ask my sister," said Sari. "I am engaged for the
evening, but perhaps she can entertain you."
"See you later, then," said Nita running off gaily,
pretending not to have heard this conversation. On
the sidewalk she waited for Sari.
"I think you might really show that you have had
some breeding, once in a while," said Anita. "It was
horribly rude the way you came in with that 'Well!'
at poor Howard. Like a school teacher."
"Good Heavens, I thought he was going to stand
there all night. He acted as if he was getting up his
nerve to propose to you."
Mrs. Harris in white, and with an unnecessary
folded parasol in her hand came toward them smiling.
"What have my little buds been doing?"
"Nita's just made a feeble-minded date, and I've
just turned one down. That moron, Bill Wicker,
keeps asking me, and asking me!"
Mrs. Harris was pleased.
"My little girl has taken her mother's words serious-
ly about Mr. Wicker. It never does to associate with
54 THE LOVE LEGEND
dangerous men. You can't play about with fire with-
out getting singed."
Sari's childish temper flamed at this maternal inter-
pretation. Nita winked. "You're a dear, Nita," said
Sari in an undertone. "I'd like to tell you something
about the first of August, but it's got to be kept a
secret and I can't."
"You arouse my interest," said Anita amiably. She
was quite indifferent.
As they went up the steps of the house Dizzy
flourished a letter at her oldest sister. "You'll help
me break the news to mother, won't you, Anita dear?
It came in the afternoon mail, and it shows I can do
it. I told you all I could but you wouldn't believe.
Nita, will you help me with mother?"
Nita opened the letter and read it.
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
URBANA
OFFICE OF THE REGISTRAR
Miss Elizabeth Harris,
Chicago, Illinois.
Dear Madam:
In reply to your letter of July 7 I beg leave to state
that we will accept credits on certificate without ex-
amination from fully accredited high schools. For
work done under a private instructor it will be neces-
sary for you to pass our entrance examinations in
order to secure entrance credit. If you will send in
to this office a statement of all of your high school
work I shall be glad to inform you concerning your
standing for admission.
Yours very truly,
JAMES M. JONES,
S/S Chief Clerk.
THE LOVE LEGEND 55
"Honey, dear, you wouldn't care for Illinois."
"Will you help me?" asked Dizzy impatiently.
"Well, Dizzy, I'll do all I can you'll have to give
me a few days to think it over."
She went into the house to dress and promptly for-
got all about it.
CHAPTER VIII
THE DAY before Sari's stage debut, Olive announced
crossly that she was leaving.
"I'm going to be married. I've always been used
to being married, and I've never been used to doing
this kind of work, and with you girls taking a bath
every day I don't know what. I've always been used
to thinking of myself as a clean person, but I never
bathed oftener than once a week in my life. It ain't
natural. And it'll ruin your health going in swimming
and then coming right back and bathing, see if it don't.
My second husband caught cold and died from taking
a bath. He caught pneumonia, but land, he never
bathed as often as what you girls do."
"That will do, Olive," said Sari.
Olive left the room.
"Sari, you make me ill with your airs," said Dizzy.
"The poor old thing hasn't been used to being treated
like a dog."
"Ye gods," said Sari. "Nothing in this house but
fight, fight, fight. I certainly am glad I'm not going
to be here much longer."
"I'm glad I'm not," said Dizzy, heatedly.
"My, my," said Anita. "Where are you two pleas-
ant little youngsters going? Children should love
each "
"Love," said Dizzy. "She insults me. She insults
me every time she opens her mouth. I lie in bed
beside her and writhe under her insults. Why should
56
THE LOVE LEGEND 57
I be expected to be interested in the sort of shoes that
are in fashion? Why should I care whether a French
vamp is coming in or going out of style? She insults
me when we go along the street by looking into shop
windows. She insults me by her silences, her ges-
tures. Everything is an insult "
"She's been reading Russian literature," said Sari,
laughing and shrugging her shoulders. "That's the
way all the characters talk."
"If I weren't going away to college this fall," went
on Dizzy . This question raised once more, Mrs.
Harris found herself against Ward and Anita, who had
been won over to Dizzy's cause. Nita suggested that
Dizzy be allowed to enter a slightly exclusive girls'
school in Ohio which offered junior college courses.
II
When they rose from the table Nita and Ward
strolled to the lake. It was just after sunset and the
beach was as serene as an old gray woman who has
lived her years calmly, happily. Michigan babbled
and talked like a brook. The sands received their
bodies graciously as they sank down for a long sis-
terly chat.
"Ward, I know I can be a decent artist if I can dig
in and study for a year. When I see those other kids
at the Institute who have studied for three years
well, I know that if I had studied that long I wouldn't
put over the kind of pictures they do."
"I sort of thought you'd given up the idea of New
York since you'd met Howard Blackton."
Nita laughed self-consciously. "There are a lot of
things I want to do before I get married. I mean to
work myself silly in New York."
58 THE LOVE LEGEND
"I'll miss you awfully."
"Not half as much as I'll miss you, Ward. I'll be
longing for your head and shoulders and legs and
arms, many a time when I want a model. I won't be
able to get another one that's put together like you
are. You're such a beauty, Ward. We accept your
beauty as a family asset. And it's not mere physical
beauty either. I believe that your face shows what
you are if you're nice you have a nice face "
"I have the queerest feeling about myself some-
times," said Ward. "I couldn't say this to anybody
but you, because it would sound conceited. But when
I have the feeling all through me that I'm just right,
I wonder if it isn't all a dream, and if other people
who seem ugly aren't beautiful to themselves. I don't
know whether I can make you understand? Being
beautiful to me is so vivid, so real that it's unreal,
like a lunatic's vision. I wonder if every woman
doesn't have the same delusion. Perhaps it's all a
dream, and I'm only imagining that I'm beautiful as
a man might fancy himself a genius when he is only
an ordinary mortal. My mirrors and ears might be
in a conspiracy. It's so strongly in my inner con-
sciousness that I am beautiful."
"I've had the feeling that all life around me is a
dream," said Anita, "and that I'm the only reality in
it. That feeling of beauty clear through you gives you
poise, and maybe that's your secret, Ward dear, that
Helene and Mary are anxious to know."
"When I sit here and talk to you, Anita, I love you
better than any one else in the world. You are so
easy to talk to, you understand so well. You seem
so just right in your way of looking at things. And
yet, in another way you're awfully cold, Anita. You
can go off to New York and leave us all without a
THE LOVE LEGEND 59
word. You can marry sort of cold-bloodedly. You
can drop people when you don't want them any more
without another thought. Sometimes I think, you just
like all of us because it's easier for you to like the
people around you."
Anita was hurt. "Oh, that's not so. I'd never find
another person in the world I would feel the same way
to that I do to you. I like Dizzy a lot, too. What
you say may be true of mother and Sari. I feel a
sense of duty toward mother, and toward Sari, noth-
ing much. She's a silly little fool, I think."
"I love mother," said Ward. "There's something
awfully fine and delicate about her."
"Yes, there is. But I'm not at all sure that I would
care if I never saw her again." She paused, still hurt,
thinking of Ward's charge against her. "I could get
along all by myself without any of you, that's true.
But I should miss you, Ward. I'm not dependent on
anyone, but I shall be unhappy get like Helene if
I don't marry and I am not cold blooded about it
either. I can feel a sense of uselessness, horrible
Discontent creeping over me. When I marry I shall
become thoroughly practical. I do want to know nice
people, and I haven't time for people that aren't
well, worth while, people who do things. I want to
be worth knowing myself, and I want a normal life
husband and children."
"I'm sorry I said that," said Ward. "It's because
I feel badly, because you're going away, I suppose."
"You hit a sore spot. You still think it, though,
don't you?"
"Well, some. I honestly didn't mean it bitterly."
"From now on, Ward, I think I'll have to cultivate
you assiduously. It weighs upon me that I have
60 THE LOVE LEGEND
neglected you. I wanted to ask you how you liked
Howard Blackton, really."
"You're not serious about him?"
Again Nita was hurt. "Don't you like him?"
"Yes, I like him lots. He's so clean-looking. No
one could help liking him. But it seems, somehow,
as if you could get some one really splendid. You're
much the nicest person in our family. You should
marry a really splendid, great man."
"I don't want a great man. I don't look forward
to a big success. I'm not a genius myself and don't
fancy myself as one. I think that people who take
themselves and their work as seriously as Dizzy does
are always a little ridiculous. But I do want a man
that's successful, and well, commonplace, but not com-
mon. Howard Blackton will be successful."
"Yes, he'll be that, all right," said Ward. "Ten
years from now you can just see him with a family
and a home in the suburbs."
v "The great endeavor to draw no-account little pic-
tures and get them in print looks as little and unim-
portant to Howard as spending a lifetime carving one
of those complex, hideous ivory vases in the Art
Institute."
"You won't have much in common."
"We don't speak the same language. He puts down
things like Christian Science as a sort of bosh. Just
plain figures, and earthbound business and straight
stuff interests him. And it seems sort of flavorless
to me."
"But why, why, why, then?"
"Darn itl I'm crazy about him. He was telling
me about a friend of his and I could see it was his
ideal of a girl and marriage. She was this man's "col-
lege girl" for four years. She was good-looking and
THE LOVE LEGEND 61
had had everything but was perfectly happy to live
in a little apartment and cook and so forth just make
a wonderful home for a man. And he told me this
when I'd just spieled my head off about the joys of
arting."
"And yet you think you'll marry him?"
"I will if he proposes to me "
"Hasn't he proposed yet?"
"Oh, Ward; he's got to propose, so I can have it off
my mind. I've been worried about it a little, and it's
got to come right. Oh, I know it will. Then I can
go to New York with a clear conscience. You know
he's going to California next month, anyway, and
we'll have a whole continent between us. We must
be engaged."
"You'll probably meet some one else in New York.
It seems important now, I know, but "
"Ward, I've made up my mind. I don't think he's
particularly wonderful in lots of ways, but he's the
man I want, and I'm going to marry him if he'll only
ask me. But not for a long time."
"But in the years aren't you afraid you'll lose him?"
"Yes, I am, horribly afraid, but I'm not going to
let myself be. I'm just going to love him, and he's
going to love me. I believe in love like that, Ward."
It was a phrase to Nita, that belief. She had no
faith in changeless love only in her own successful
destiny. But to Ward, sitting there on the sand with
the violet luminous evening all about her, it was aching
poignant reality. Her eyes on the harbor light at
South Chicago flashing off and on, white and red, she
was thinking love is not like that; it burns a steady
white light forever like the stars. She looked up into
the fluctuating blues and purples of the heavens tran-
suded with dewdrops of light millions of stars; think
62 THE LOVE LEGEND
of it! stars burning steadily like millions of loves;
happy loves; think of it; millions of ecstatic girls
mating with their charming princes every day; it was
wonderful, a world like that. When would her prince
come? Was Rod ?
CHAPTER IX
AT BREAKFAST the next morning, Dizzy presented a
small advertisement in a newspaper to her mother,
which said that a representative of the Wharton
School for Girls, Essex, Ohio, could be seen at the
Hotel La Salle, daily. Nita and Ward rose to the
occasion and urged her to go down town at once and
meet the educator. After some telephoning an inter-
view was arranged, and Dizzy, Ward and Mrs. Harris
caught a mid-morning train.
The school would admit Dizzy to the Junior college
with the understanding that if she were not able to
keep up she was to drop back into the fourth year of
preparatory work. And so it was settled immediately
that Dizzy was to spend her next year at boarding
school.
She hugged Ward impulsively.
"I haven't seen Dizzy so happy since she was a little
girl," said Ward.
"I'm never happy," said Dizzy shortly. "I'm too
busy to be happy or unhappy. I'm not an emotional,
young female."
"Oh, Elizabeth," said Mrs. Harris, "I dislike that
word so!"
"Well, then, be glad I'm not one," said Dizzy.
63
64 THE LOVE LEGEND
II
There was shopping to be done. It was nearly six
when they finally left the train at the Lakeshore sta-
tion and began the walk home.
"I hope Olive hasn't messed up dinner too much,"
said Ward. "She hardly ever gets anything right.
I'm afraid I should have come home early."
But inside the house there was no sign of dinner,
no sign of Olive. Ward found her thrown across the
bed in her room, sobbing noisily into the pillows.
"Why, what's the matter?"
"Oh, gee. Miss Ward, oh, gee," was all Olive was
able to articulate at first; but it became clear after a
few moments that her man's leg was broken and he
was lying in a hospital.
"But you knew this before, Olive. You were telling
me this morning that as soon as he came out you were
going to be married."
"Oh, my, don't speak of it," said Olive, her face
convulsed with pain at the thought. "We was going
to be married. But we can't be now. You see he's
a teamster and the company he works for is going to
give him a pension "
"But that's nice," said Ward, trying to be encourag-
ing."
"Oh, my, oh, my, and now he's got the pension his
wife won't divorce him "
"Oh, but Olive, is he married?"
"Oh, yes. He's married, but he was going to get a
divorce and marry me, but his wife's a Catholic and
she don't believe in divorce now that he's got his pen-
sion. He called me up from the hospital to say he's
got to go back to her "
THE LOVE LEGEND 65
Ward hurried out to tell the news to Dizzy and her
mother. Then she went down to get dinner, while
Mrs. Harris went to administer comfort to Olive. Nita
.coming in was regaled with the story of Olive's
tragedy, but Sari didn't appear.
"I wish she'd come," murmured Dizzy. "I'm too
hungry to wait dinner for her. I think she might
telephone if she's staying down to the theater or any-
thing."
They sat down to dinner without her. Suddenly in
,the midst of a discussion about Dizzy's future Nita
exclaimed dramatically, "This is the first of August."
"It is, isn't it," said Ward. "Oh, dear, I wonder
what the child is up to?"
"What was she always saying about the first of
August?" asked Mrs. Harris nervously. "She's never
stayed out like this before."
"Oh, she'll be in later," said Ward, with a compas-
sionate glance at her mother's worn face.
"She should have telephoned," fumed Dizzy.
The telephone rang. Three of them jumped to
answer it.
"It's only Rod," said Ward. "The boys have got
hold of a car, and they want to know if you and I
and Sari want to run down to Campus Gardens?"
"Do go," said Mrs. Harris. "Sari will be home by
the time they get here, I am sure. I expect her any
moment now."
Ill
But when Bill Wicker drove up at nine o'clock only
two girls were prepared to join the party.
"Where's Sari?" demanded Wicker, who still an-
ticipated a conquest.
66 THE LOVE LEGEND
"Why she hasn't come home from the studio yet,
the little wretch. Mother is horribly worried. I think
she's gone to the theater with some of the girls from
the studio "
"Too bad," said Wicker, perfunctorily. "Well,
we'll have to get another girl if we are going to dance.
Your young sister wouldn't come, I suppose?"
"Oh, mother wouldn't hear of it," said Ward, has-
tily. "She's only sixteen. Let's get Mary."
"Well!" Wicker puckered his lips and twisted them
about in his face thoughtfully, and rejected Mary with
the carelessness of a man turning over a page. "She
calls me Mr. Wicker, and treats me like I'm a real
grown-up man."
" or Helene?" went on Ward.
"Well," Wicker still hesitated, sighed and ejaculated
a feeble "all right."
To the relief of Ward and Anita, who remembered
Mrs. Partridge's judgment of little Bill Wicker,
Helene was alone. She felt a mysterious and naughty
interest in Wicker and so accepted gladly and uniquely,
for impromptu invitations were not favorites with her.
Her innate disquiet about her appearance prevented
her from being happy at a party unless she had had a
day or more to prepare her clothes, her complexion,
her hair for the event.
In the car, running smoothly between the ribbons
of boulevard lights, the six happy people divided mys-
tically into three happy couples. Ward and Rod were
alone, their thoughts racing neck and neck, merging,
dividing again to run in parallel grooves, leaping to
thrilling adventures at the meeting of eyes, melting
and moulding together at a secret hand clasp.
And Nita and Howard, together on the back seat,
THE LOVE LEGEND 67
had the same intimate sense of traveling along end-
lessly, side by side.
Helene's thoughts also took on a poetry, tinged with
the romance of the summer sky, and the curly-headed
boy beside her. A poetry slightly marred by the
ridiculous, even in her thoughts, since he was five or
six years younger than she. What Mr. Wicker's
thoughts were may be speculated on by no one who
has not the perspicuity of that entertaining psycholo-
gist, Mr. Briggs, who tells with equal ease about what
a two-months-old infant or a poker chip thinks.
IV
The car pulled up at Campus Gardens, a resort on
the Midway in vogue among those undergraduates of
the University who had determined to spend their four
years there with the minimum amount of intellectual
strain.
"Horribly overcrowded with Jews," muttered Bill,
as he followed the waiter to a table. "But then, every
place is. Wonder where they all come from?"
They took their place in the center of a swarm of
dark-eyed, gay, brilliantly dressed orientals of that
class of Semitics who habitually use the big restau-
rants and summer gardens as training schools in the
social arts. Jews, in the economic ascendent phase,
learning to alter their habits. Jews conscientiously
low-voiced, airing superlative outer refinements osten-
tatiously, rising elaborately for their women, greeting
acquaintances with a formality ascribed by the movies
to the British aristocracy. Strident, ultra-smart Jews,
dressed like actors in a society drama, swaggering, as-
serting their lordship of such places. And Jewish
maidens. Beautiful, ugly, shrinking, brazen, aggres-
68 THE LOVE LEGEND
sively racial-looking ones, and here and there, one in-
distinguishable from a gentile; all expensively dressed,
with shoes, wraps, hats, gloves in the very height of
the mode. Ease, conspicuous ease, the one thing they
all held in common.
Large cement spaces lay open for dancing. Rod
and Ward, Nita and Howard joined the dancers, glad
of each other's arms. Bill Wicker and Helene became
acutely self-conscious in the network of expert danc-
ers which scraped them on all sides. To them the
music blared hideously, endlessly. The night stifled
them, as inwardly cursing each other's skill they
tripped over each other's feet and went doggedly on
and on.
The music ended. Wicker clapped with the others,
hoping the orchestra would not give them more. But
the lazy strains resumed, and Helene and Wicker, out
of all harmony, tried again.
When they returned to their table, Bill hastily en-
gaged Ward for the next dance, while Rod sat rather
sulkily and said nothing during the intermission. He
was at a stage in his affair with Ward where he was
ready to regard this innocent act of Bill Wicker's as
a searing personal injury.
Ward and her curly-headed partner glided through
the next dance rhythmically. He whispered that he
loved to see her wearing blue, it suited her so well, to
which Ward languidly replied, "Really? I thought
you told me that nothing but green set me off
properly."
"You wear any color, of course," said Bill Wicker,
a little slowly, sending a hurry call through his brain
to find the incident of his working his "line" on Ward.
He was so dull-witted as to fail to guess that to ap-
pear in character before one of the Harris girls was
THE LOVE LEGEND 69
to appear thus before them all. He leaned back from
the waist, and beamed meaningfully into her eyes.
She threw him a bored look, which he misinterpreted.
Rod and Helene did not dance, as Helene was quite
too exhausted to essay the floor again so soon. Rod
talked at random his thoughts on Ward. She had
gone off gayly with Bill. Not even a last glance for
him. Playing with him, she was. He would show her.
This resolution was extremely feeble and short-
lived, born of a desire of monopoly rather than actual
jealousy. But for a few moments, to Ward's amuse-
ment, he devoted himself unreservedly to Helene, who
began to entertain exciting thoughts of actually taking
a man away from Ward.
Rod got up to dance with Helene. Ward and Wicker
sailed off together once more. Nita and Howard
looked at each other through a delicate vari-colored
gauze of emotion.
"I hope I'm not keeping you from dancing," said
Anita, with quite subconscious if trite attempt to draw
him on.
Howard's ardent young gaze penetrated deeper into
hers.
"I'd rather sit here and talk to you than do any-
thing else in the world," he told her.
It was a beautiful moment to both of them. The
music, the lights, the soft summer air all were just
right. Nita gazed absorbedly back into his face.
"That's the first compliment you've ever paid me,"
she said. Then her absorption in him came into her
consciousness, making her warm all over. She felt
70 THE LOVE LEGEND
self-conscious, but held to her poise. "And I'm get-
ting all red about it, too," she went on humorously.
They both laughed, but behind Howard's laugh
there was the satisfaction of the intense, sincere com-
pliment he felt the remark to be. His gaze held hers
with something of a challenge.
VI
The music stopped abruptly. An agile young man
had climbed off the platform up on the roof of the
band-stand stage. Clad in white so that he could be
seen, silhouetted against the night sky, he pranced
along the roof. Along the walls of the building lining
the enclosed gardens he ran, stepping highly to the
roof toward the front which enclosed the winter gar-
den of the establishment, where he executed a little
dance, and was joined by an equally fearless young
woman. Perilously they dodged in and out, lost to
sight behind chimneys for some moments only to re-
appear to caper more. Suddenly the man seized her
in his arms and swung her round with her body at
right angles to his. As they were spinning the third
time he apparently lost his grip and her body went
skimming through the air and landed with a soft thud
on the pavement.
A long drawn shivering "o-oh" went through the
crowd, 'and the dance music started up as everyone
realized that a dummy had been thrown and it was
all part of the show.
VII
It was after midnight when the car pulled up at the
Harris door, but the lights in the house were still
burning brightly.
THE LOVE LEGEND 71
"Wonder what time Sari got in," murmured Ward,
sleepily, as they left the boys.
Mrs. Harris, her head on the table, was being futile-
ly comforted by a harassed Dizzie.
"Sari telephoned," explained Dizzy. "She's left
home, the young idiot. The Wilson dancers opened at
the North Shore Hotel tonight and she's gone with
them. She's got a room on the north side and wouldn't
tell us where "
"But "
"I would have gone right out there. Oh, what will
become of my poor little girl," Mrs. Harris inter-
rupted, hysterically. "But she telephoned too late.
She waited until the performance was over."
"Canny youngster," said Dizzy, with almost a touch
of admiration in her tone. "Never mind, mother,
we'll get her tomorrow and bring her back.
"She was heartless, absolutely heartless," said Mrs.
Harris, between sobs. "She wouldn't give me the
slightest satisfaction."
"She promised to meet you tomorrow, though,
mother," said Dizzy.
"Yes, she said that if I would come down to the
Palmer House at four that she would talk to me, but
she refused to divulge her address. Think of me hav-
ing to meet my own little daughter in a hotel." She
dissolved in sobs once more.
"Well, that's better than a grocery store, isn't it?"
,said Nita. "Come mother, don't worry about it. It
will all come right in the morning. She can't stay
away over a night or two."
"On the stage," whispered Mrs. Harris, staring past
the book-case at horrors seen only by herself, and
shuddering. "My little Sarah on the stage! What
would her father say?"
72 THE LOVE LEGEND
"Well, her father would say, 'what of it?' " said
Dizzy, who disliked having her mother's opinions,
which she considered unintelligent, put in her father's
mouth. "You don't think father would have been
misled by all this twaddle about the vice of the thea-
ter, do you?"
"None of my children understand me," wailed Mrs.
Harris.
"Poor mother," said Ward.
" except Ward," said Mrs. Harris. "She loves
her mother!"
CHAPTER X
SARI stood in a corner of the crimson parlor of the
Palmer House with her feet unobtrusively held in
fifth position. She secretly hoped that some keen-
eyed, sophisticated person would know she was a
dancer, but none of the languid loungers in the room
appeared intelligent enough to notice.
Her mother was late. Her heart was beating.
Would she after all have the courage? Yes, all she
had to do was remember that her mother's fireworks
were all humbug and she could eliminate in one swoop
her family, Lakeshore, and all the annoyances that
went with them.
"There is nothing the least bit subtle about mother,"
she thought, as she relaxed in a red plush chair. "She
doesn't realize that I perhaps understand and know
things. Everything must be explained to me, she
thinks. I must be on my guard to be polite to her.
But heavens, when she takes a key sentence and de-
velops it in all her arguments, it's irritating." She was
addressing an imaginary chum, a vague man. "Noth-
ing can induce her to stop talking long after I've un-
derstood what she wants to say. She repeats horribly,
using all five or four or whatever it is forms of devel-
opment of a paragraph. And of course she'll re-
proach me for not letting her know about it. As if
she would have considered letting me go, if I had
even hinted to her. Well, I did hint."
She saw her mother coming, worn-looking, anxious,
73
74 THE LOVE LEGEND
sweet. Something tugged at her heart. Her expres-
sion hardened.
"Sarah!" Her mother kissed her, in a stillicide of
emotion.
Sari smiled weakly, in an effort to carry off the
scene with a high hand, but her mother's batteries
were too strong for her. She collapsed into a big
chair, and began kicking her heels sulkily like an in-
dignant baby.
"Dear, dear little Sarah, don't you love your
home?" Mrs. Harris began. She had been thinking
all night long, and had decided to appeal to Sari's love
for her. She might have succeeded except that the
phrasing reminded Sari of a story she had heard when
she was twelve years old: a salvation army captain
on a sinking ship, approaching a Frenchman, asks,
"My friend, don't you love Jesus?" "Oh, yes," ex-
claims the Frenchman, enthusiastically, "Not dese
great beeg English cheeses, but de nize Camem-
bert " She laughed. Her mother looked hurt and
shocked and Sari recovered her position.
"Of course I love my home, mother," said Sari, "but
I can't stay there all my life."
"Not stay in your home all your life? What is a
home for? Don't you intend to ever have a home of
your own?"
They were bickering. Sari sailed competently
ahead.
"I don't know. I'm going to work first and live my
own life "
"But on the stage "
"See, you wouldn't want me to go on the stage, and
so surely, since I have chosen the stage I ought to
leave home."
"But you are so young to choose."
THE LOVE LEGEND 75
"I should have been on two years ago. I am not
young "
"Oh, you're a baby, a pitiful little baby. You
shan't be away from home. If you must try the stage,
try it, but stay at home, don't live off among
strangers "
"I can't stay at home. The trip is too long. Why,
I shouldn't be able to get the last train, and that
means I would have to come all the way on the cars.
It would take me hours! I shouldn't get home before
three or four in the morning."
"Oh, I would come with you. We could use a cab.
Sari, you mustn't think of it, you must come home."
"Yes, and have you begging me night and day to give
up dancing. No mother, once and for all I've broken
away and I'm not coming back. I hate homes, any-
way."
"The home is the hotbed of character, dear. It must
make the conditions right for the preparation of each
tender plant that later must take its chances under
God's open sky. The time has not yet come for you.
You are so young. I don't want to force your develop-
ment, nor to retard it, nor yet to pervert it. I am not
trying to make a fuchsia out of a geranium if you
really feel that you must go on the stage, it will all
come in good time. But on the other hand, the best
gardener must do more than protect the species. He
must perfect species."
"Mother, I am not a little plant," said Sari, im-
patiently. "And as for your pruning me and fostering
me, why it's simply ridiculous. You are no more in-
terested in me as an individual than I am in you. If
you weren't my mother you wouldn't feel the slightest
interest in me. I'm a little wild flower in the garden."
Tears had gathered in her mother's eyes. "Wild
76 THE LOVE LEGEND
things are pretty, dear, but we can't live wild. I
know you don't care for me a bit, but I care for
you "
"Oh, mother, for heaven's sake, of course I care for
you. I said that I wasn't interested in you as an in-
dividual. Why should I be? We have no interests in
common. We are different ages. I love you, but I
can't live in the same house with you. I am careless,
even lazy at times, two qualities that you despise: I
am moody, a fact that you know and never compre-
hend. Some of the plans you have for me make me
open my eyes. You no more understand me and
the advice you give me!" Sari cast up her eyes and
shrugged Frenchily.
"But Sari, your own mother! Can't you take ad-
vice from your own mother?"
"Why should your advice be so much more valuable
because you are my mother? Supposing that Helene
Partridge did this, and that her mother advised her
to leave home. Would you expect her to take her
mother's advice if she gave what you considered bad
advice?"
"Mrs. Partridge would never advise such a thing.
Besides "
"But supposing she did?"
"But Helene is ten years older than you."
"Well, supposing she were my age. Now, listen,
mother, and get this between the eyes. Answer hon-
estly. Supposing that Helene were my age, and ex-
actly in my circumstances, and supposing that her
mother, your best friend, did advise her to go on
doing as I am doing! Now don't say that she couldn't
be my age, or in my circumstances or that her mother
wouldn't advise her. I'm asking a hypothetical ques-
tion. By hypothesis, she's my age, and Mrs. Part-
THE LOVE LEGEND 77
ridge advised her to go on just as I'm doing. Now!
Should she take her mother's advice or not?"
"Oh, Sari, don't be silly. Come home with mother."
"Answer my question. Remember the circum-
stances are the same. Should she obey her mother,
giving advice that you consider wrong or should she
go home as you want me to do?"
"If her circumstances were the same, she should go
home with her mother. Sari, let's not waste time "
"Then, you admit yourself that if a mother advises
a daughter wrongly, a daughter should use her own
judgment? Just the fact that a woman is a mother
doesn't give her the wisdom of Solomon. If you
weren't my mother you wouldn't dream of forcing an
opinion on me as to what is best for me."
"Oh, Sari, a mother always knows what is best for
her own daughter."
"How?"
This question brought Mrs. Harris up emotionally,
as a sharp pull on a bridle will bring a horse to a
stop. She sputtered for a moment, and then lost her-
self in tears. "How? Why why-wh-wh she just
knows! Oh, what shall I do? My baby!"
Sari sighed. After a moment she began her argu-
ment again.
"But, don't you see, mother, if you were somebody
else's mother "
"Oh, for heaven's sake, Sari, stop reiterating that if
I were some one else's mother. I'm not! I'm your
mother, even though you are not satisfied with me,
the fact is there."
"I am satisfied with you," said Sari, in an injured
tone. "I think a lot of you."
"Then come home if you care anything for me.
This will kill me."
78 THE LOVE LEGEND
"Oh, mother, you're so silly. You know it won't
kill you. It -won't even affect your life much. It
doesn't even have to make you unhappy unless you
let it."
"What will Mrs. Partridge say, and Mrs. Field, and
everybody?"
"What do I care what they will say. You have too
much of an opinion of what a lot of addlepated old
frumps think. What does it matter?"
"The addlepated old frumps are my friends."
"But it does matter to me whether I go back or
not. It matters a lot. I won't go back and be un-
happy and quarrel with the girls and have Ward
vamping all the men, and Dizzy making fun of every
opinion I have, and everything so dull, and all the old
women in the place, shaking their heads, gossiping,
acting as if they had never seen a girl's leg when the
dresses get short, and scolding about extremes and
dust when they get long. Worth-while men hate to
come way out there in the country, anyway."
"Sari, I'll take an apartment nearer town in the
fall, if you like, in Kenwood, or on the near North
Side "
"Oh, mother, I want to live by myself "
II
They quarreled for about an hour till both were
white and worn.
"I will never get over it, if you leave your home!"
"Oh, yes, you will, and that's more than you'll do,
if I go back now. I never will hear the last of it then.
I've burned my bridges and I'm not going to re-build
them. So goodbye, I'm going now, there's no use in
THE LOVE LEGEND 79
prolonging this moment any more. Goodbye!" She
kissed her mother and whirled away
"But you haven't told me where you are? I must
go with you and find out "
"Now, mother, listen," said Sari, sharply. "If you
follow me and try to find out where I am and all about
me, I will go to New York and not let you know a
thing about me. I am all right. As it is, I will call
you up every day, and let one of the girls come and
visit me for a day in a week or so, maybe Ward. Just
now, I can't bear to have anyone come and see me.
I'm in a perfectly comfortable, perfectly decent
place "
"Sari, dear, but why can't I come and see where?"
"Oh, you can, sometime, but just now I'm sick of
all this bickering and I'm not going to have you fuss-
ing over the plumbing and the air and the light, and
heavens knows what. I want to be free. I want to be
by myself, and how can I be, if you and the girls are
dropping in on me every other day."
"If you'd let Nita or Ward come and stay with
you?"
"There! What did I say? The first thing you
want to do is spoil everything for me. I want to be
alone, and away from my family. I've seen them all
my life and I want to see what it's like to live without
them."
"Sari, you are a cruel heartless girl, and when you
have a daughter of your own you will see. And all I
hope is that you never suffer what I am suffering."
"Mother, I really must go. It's a farce, really. You
have three other daughters "
"But I need you."
"What for? I only create discord. It is better for
80 THE LOVE LEGEND
me to take myself off. This is the most painless way.
You are all happier."
"If I had only known. Why didn't you tell me that
you were discontented and unhappy at home. There
is nothing I wouldn't do for any one of you."
"Oh, I did tell you. All the girls are selfish and
absorbed in their own affairs. No one at home under-
stands me "
"And you think you will find some one outside the
home to understand you?"
"I need no one. I understand myself. I can be
happy alone, but I cannot be happy in the bosom of
my family. I know that sounds cold-blooded, but I
am eighteen. I have a right to life and a chance to
stand alone. I need to get out in the world for my
own development. I am earning forty dollars a week,
and that is enough for any one to live on!"
"Money! I'm not worried about money. I can let
you have some, if you wish. It's the thought of my
little daughter alone in a big city, full of strangers."
"Mother, darling, I really must go. You make me
laugh. Go back and pull that before the Lakeshore
Woman's Club, they will appreciate it."
This time she turned and ran, leaving her mother
weeping on a gaudy red plush chair.
"And to think I spent my honeymoon here," said
Mrs. Harris to herself and began a long, luxurious,
emotional debauch.
Ill
When Mrs. Harris brought the news home Ward
wept. Drawing close to her mother, she consoled her
in every way she could; imagining reasons of a high
and noble nature to excuse Sari. Nita, slightly an-
noyed because of the upset to the household, spoke of
THE LOVE LEGEND 81
it only when Ward or her mother tended to give it
a tragical dignity; then she called it a schoolgirl
escapade.
Mrs. Harris wondered what people were saying.
Not that it mattered to her now, she said, laying great
stress on the last word.
"Do you mind if I talk to you, Ward?"
"Of course not, mother, dear. What is it?"
"Do you remember the little blue apron Sari wore
to school the first day she ever went?"
"The one with the white organdy strings?"
"Yes ... I have ... I have got that dress
yet. It's at the bottom of the big brown trunk in the
attic . . ." There was a pause. Then Mrs. Harris
broke down. "I don't think I can stand it."
Nita interrupted:
"Now mother, stop fretting about Sari. There's
no use "
"Fretting! . . . When my little girl has gone
from me?"
"Well, look at it reasonably. It's a great bore, of
course, but there is no great harm done. Let her get
a taste of it. She'll come home all right. The thing
now is to put a face on it for the neighbors. Let them
know that you approve."
"Yes, I must do that," said Mrs. Harris. "Oh, what
a position she has put me in. I shall have to pretend
to sanction stage life. And then the horrible tempta-
tions "
"Nonsense. Stage life isn't as bad as you think,
mother."
"My child, you know nothing of life."
"Mother dear," said Ward. "I think perhaps times
have changed. Even the nicest girls go on the stage
now. The daughter of Professor Handbook is in the
82 THE LOVE LEGEND
same bunch with Sari, I think. You remember Pro-
fessor and Mrs. Handbook at the University."
"Dear, dear. Poor Doctor Handbook and Mrs.
Handbook certainly have my sympathy!"
Tears rose like bubbles on boiling water.
"No one thinks a thing about it, mother dear. You
can tell Mrs. Partridge and all the rest of them that
you approve Sari's actions. And that in these days
a girl has a right to develop herself."
"Yes, but on the stage! Why couldn't she have
gone to the normal college and become a teacher like
Drusilla Drudan if she wanted to develop herself."
"Oh, mother, can you imagine any of us teaching
school?"
"I don't see why not. It's certainly respectable
enough. I wish I had been stricter with all of you.
Oh, why did I ever consent to her studying dancing at
all. Why? Why? Why?"
"Well, it's done now, mother," said Anita. "Sari
is a silly little idiot, of course, but there is no helping
that. It is cruel of her not to let us know where she
is, however. We'll have to tell people that we do
know."
"I'm not going to stand it; I'm going to do some-
thing!" Mrs. Harris looked ahead of her with deter-
mination in dizzy circles singing around her head.
"Good for you, mother," called Dizzy from the
porch. "Why don't you go up there with the police
and stop the performance?"
"Elizabeth! I could never create a scandal like
that!"
"No, of course not. Now let's be reasonable and
stop fussing, all of us. This experience may do Sari
some good. She's simply chuck full of silly ideas. I
say, let her alone. Don't cause a scandal we'll all be
THE LOVE LEGEND 83
sorry for. Just smile and tell the truth about her to
people. No one will ask for her address, anyway. It
isn't as if everyone didn't know all about Sari. If she
chooses to go on the north side under the chaperonage
of Carlotta Wilson and her mother - "
"Does her mother chaperon the girls?"
"Certainly. Carlotta Wilson never goes anywhere
without her mother. And the girls in the group will
all be well taken care of. You can count on that. And
then Barbara Handbook being in the bunch, too,
makes it really quite all right. Good heavens! It's
not like the stage, anyway. It's more of a lark than
anything else. It's only appearing at a hotel."
"It's a public appearance for money," said Mrs.
Harris, but her voice was several degrees more cheer-
ful. She went out on the porch to reproach Dizzy for
having suggested the police.
"She's taking her medicine," said Ward. "But the
way she does it scares me. She just tiptoes around the
house as if there was a funeral. And the way she
smiles and tries to be cheerful is enough to break your
heart."
"Ward, you always have been hoodwinked terribly
by mother."
Among the clans of Lakeshore intense inward glad-
ness shone, as the news was squirted about that Sari
Harris had actually gone on the stage.
Though every girl in Lakeshore who heard the news
was secretly discontented and unhappy under her
mother's domination, there was not one who did not
feel a new spurt of self-respect at her own heroism in
staying at home.
84 THE LOVE LEGEND
t
But if the daughters inwardly rejoiced, the mothers
openly told how glad they were that their own daugh-
ters were not fools, and pitied poor dear Mrs. Harris,
who was such a wonderful mother, and who had such
a marvelous spirit.
CHAPTER XI
THE SUMMER routine went on as usual. Nita and
Ward swam and danced and walked and played tennis
in their leisure hours with Howard and Rod. Dizzy
studied. Mrs. Harris attended to her neighborhood
activities. Sari telephoned every day, but refused to
disclose the location of her room.
August slipped by, and Nita prepared for New
York, and Dizzy for boarding school. They were to
take the same train east. Dizzy had to go early for
her examinations, and so they were planning to leave
the first week in September.
Shopping and sewing for them occupied the days
of Ward and her mother, whose constant refrain was,
"I don't know what we're going to do without you
girls," and "the place won't be the same." Nita lis-
tened politely, Dizzy abstractedly, both equally bored,
both murmuring meaningless phrases in return.
Ward and Mrs. Harris talked of nothing else.
II
One Sunday afternoon late in August, Ward came
to Nita, reading in the porch swing. She was agitated,
almost unpoised. She fidgeted.
"Nita, dear."
"Yes."
"There's something I've been wanting to talk to you
about. You see I don't quite know what to think
85
86 THE LOVE LEGEND
what to do in a way it seems as if I ought not to let
anyone know Rod's feelings and yet and yet I'm
so worried. I must have advice."
The story came fluently enough with frequent sym-
pathetic interjections from Nita.
"We were out walking, and I noticed a peculiar ex-
pression on his face when I suggested that we go and
sit on the pier. I thought perhaps he might be in-
tending to try to kiss me, and I didn't like it very
well I mean, lately he has kept trying and trying to
do different things like that.
"But there was a silence. He had been telling
about his work in the steel mills the grubby job he
is holding now promises something in the future. But
he could go home and run his father's store in that
horrid little town he comes from, and be a high
monkey-monk. Suddenly he said in his regular voice
as if he were talking about the weather: 'It makes it
doubly hard to decide, Ward, because you see, I love
you and I want you ' "
"My dear!"
"Yes, he did, he said it just like that. I don't know
what else he said. He started to rave. I was stunned,
positively stunned. I never thought of such a plain
sudden blurting out like that "
"How positively thrilling. I wish Howard-
"It sort of thrills me now to think- of it. But at the
time I could only stroke his hand and say nothing. I
could only sit and wonder because none of his ravings
seemed to touch me. It seemed so unreal, so im-
possible."
"Oh, but Ward, you've had so many boys crazy
about you. I should think that "
"But none of them were ever like this. They were
all just boys and I knew they would get over it, but
THE LOVE LEGEND 87
with Rod it's different. It's serious. Once, right after
I first met him I had the strongest feeling that I'd
better stop seeing him. That I was going to hurt him
horribly. A voice seemed to say to me, 'you'd better
let that man alone/ "
"How interesting and weird. But don't you think
you'll marry him? Honestly Ward, I think he's great.
I don't see what more you could want. And then, too,
he seems to be your type of man."
"I do like him, Nita, I like him a lot. I like him
and respect him so much that I hate to hurt him. But
about love, I don't know. I don't love him. I don't
love anybody. At times he thrills me almost unbear-
ably. And I don't know he seems to be clean and
honorable and strong all right like the little Colonel's
father said her husband must be "
"I think that was wonderful that silver yardstick
business in the 'Little Colonel' " said Nita. "I always
think of that myself. I think Howard measures up,
all right, don't you?"
"Oh yes! Yes, indeed. Rod said to me at the last,
'You see, dear, I trust you completely. I have placed
myself in your power.' Oh Rod, Rod, I'm so sorry
for you. You see if he stays on here it's possible that
he may work in at a certain mill in the east and get a
chance to become a rich man. And if he goes now,
it's just being a small- town person, and not amount-
ing to much in the world. But if he stays here it's
just going to keep on getting worse and worse until it
gets to be part of him. He says it's part of him now."
"Don't you really think you will marry him?"
"I don't know. I'm to give him his answer tonight.
I promised, but I can't somehow make up my mind.
He told me that he was my slave, that he would do
88 THE LOVE LEGEND
exactly as I said; and think of the awful, frightful
responsibility . . ."
"He might make you care, even if you don't love
him now!"
"Yes, that's what I think. The truth is I want him
to stay and play with me. I like to take hold of his
hand because it gives me the feeling that we're both
so beautiful. It was wonderful last night in a way,
the moonlight by the lake, and somehow there was
the water so big and mysterious, giving out something
warm and luminous, and the sky like a little house
keeping us cozy and sheltered. . . ."
"You do love him!"
"I don't know. I don't know. If he were the right
one, wouldn't I know at once?"
"The prince? Mother's prince. Do you believe in
him?"
"Nita, I do. I do. Don't you?"
"Yes." In a way Nita did. She was not wholly
untruthful.
"I must be wise. I must decide. Oh Nita, Nita,
how can I be big enough and wise enough to decide?"
Ill
Rod had an armful of gladioli, the color of deli-
cate coral. He followed Ward into the house
self-consciously. His way, his air, his manner, his
graceful body attitudes were not potent enough to con-
ceal his hopeful embarrassment. Mrs. Harris cor-
nered him and rendered him nearly imbecile by relat-
ing a long involved story. Ward, after she had ar-
ranged the flowers in a huge vase, took an armchair
which domineered the room; a point of vantage which
she occupied with sufficient demureness.
THE LOVE LEGEND 89
They got up and stumbled out finally. Rod had
the impression that Mrs. Harris was still going on
and on as they left. They walked to the beach with-
out exchanging a word.
He caught her arm. "Oh, Ward, you are so silent T
It makes me afraid, it makes me afraid!"
The timbre of his voice plunged and somersaulted
through her as if she were liquid. She turned her
warm, astonished, imploring eyes up to him in a short
look that made him faint. An impetus at once terrify-
ing and exhilarating merged them. A kiss. A long
breath died in words and phrases of endearments, and
Ward was transcended to a cloud touched with the
gold and pink of sunset. In the warm radiance of a
new-found emotion she could no longer feel her body.
They separated and without touching dropped down
side by side on the small stones at the water's edge.
Silently they stared into what seemed like the world's
end, the black nothing of night and water.
"That was rather sudden." His strain to be matter
of fact gave his voice an edge of desperation. "Oh
Ward, you're so wonderful. You're ." He drew
her close again.
A dazed sense of diffusion had been taking posses-
sion of her. In his arms she sank safely again to
golden reality.
"I didn't think it would be like that."
"Why, darling?"
"I'm so surprised. I feel strange. You see I've
never kissed any one before."
"You're so marvelous, so unlike other girls a girl
in an old old story "
"Never, never before, and I didn't think I ever
would."
"Would what, dearest?" Soft as the caressing
90 THE LOVE LEGEND
waters on the smooth sands his lips touched her hair,
her face, her neck. "Sweet, sweet sweetheart, what?"
"Kiss anybody."
"Not even me?" He was already fatuously as-
sured. "Didn't you think that some day you'd meet
somebody like me, didn't you?"
"Yes, but I never thought I'd kiss him. Anyway
not just at first. I sort of thought he'd kiss me, and
now I've "
"Do it again."
And the rainbow moments slipped by, merging and
changing like a sunset until they were a steady golden
glow of remembrance.
IV
Rumors of various disagreeable sorts floated around
the neighborhood about Sari. Mr. William Wicker in
calling on Mary Field one night told the story of his
meeting with Sari on the beach in the dark. Said
Mary to Nita:
"You know I've always felt I don't want to say
anything about your sister, Nita dear, because I think
as much of Sari as anyone. But you know she did get
books out of the library by De Maupassant, that
awful French writer, and read them. You know,
there's no harm in that sort of thing, really. I'm aw-
fully broad-minded about it. But I do feel that my
own mind is much purer than Sari's on that account,
and then the other night Mr. Wicker said a few
things that made me think Sari really had been care-
less."
"What did he say?"
"Well, nothing much, only that I think a girl has to
be awfully careful or a man will think she isn't quite
THE LOVE LEGEND 91
womanly. I think she has given Mr. Wicker that
impression. Of course I told him that Sari "
"Mary, I'll tell you something. Whatever Bill
Wicker said about my sister is not true. It's nothing
but spite. He has fairly pursued Sari with invitations.
He has begged her time and time again to let him
come over. I know that. Why Sari would no more
waste a moment's time on him than "
Nita was rarely so untactful as to hint that a man
whom Mary had allowed to come and see her was not
welcome at the Harris home. But she was thoroughly
angry. An attack on her clan was an indirect attack
on herself. They parted rather coolly soon afterward
and Nita hastened home to tell Ward about it.
Ward, more moved than Nita, clenched her fists and
said that if she were a man she would shoot Wicker.
Her inner nature, laid bare by the new conscious-
ness of herself as the heroine of what she called the
oldest story in the world, was exposed to the darts
of all emotions. Anger took possession of her readily
she was eager for a plot to unfold that she might
thwart the villain since she had already won the hero.
Since Rod's kiss the night before she had been tip
toe on the summit of all the emotions she had ever
dreamed. And now she felt herself to be supremely
the master, not only of her own destiny, but of all
young girls. A melodramatic conversation with her-
self she would take Wicker away from those foolish
girls he was playing about with, and make him fall in
love with her. Then she would laugh at him and scorn
him and send him away broken sent her to the tele-
phone. She invited him to call that night.
He came. The little living room back of the draw-
ing room, seemed to shrink under the expansion of his
conceit. He made love to Ward in his usual desultory
92 THE LOVE LEGEND
way, but he did not get caught. He was too canny,
his emotions were too fishlike for him to fall over-
whelmingly as Ward had hoped.
It was the day after she had kissed Rod.
"By the way, Rod left for the east tonight," said
Wicker.
"The east?"
"Yeah. A telegram came and he dashed his clothes
in a bag and beat it."
"You mean he went home?"
"I dunno. He didn't confide in me. Guess he
didn't care so much about having you call me up."
A sharp pang struck through her. That Rod would
resent Bill Wicker's call had not occurred to her.
Surely, surely he had understood. The prince of the
love legend always understood everything. It was
impossible for her to believe that he had left without
seeing her.
"You mean he is going away. He hasn't gone yet?"
"I mean he's gone. I saw him hop in the taxi my-
self. He took the train at South Chicago. I heard
him calling on the telephone."
"Oh, but he's coming back, isn't he. Perhaps the
steel company sent him down to Gary on business or
something."
Wicker snorted. "Say! You must think he's pres-
ident of the company. Let me tell you he's no Judge
Gary. That job he's got doesn't throw him into a slew
of important conferences."
Ward put a loud record on the victrola to silence
Wicker so she could think. What did it mean? A
telegram, a hasty departure, and no message. Per-
haps he had tried to telephone and the line was busy.
Then why didn't he just come over? Perhaps he
didn't have time. Oh, he could have found time. Was
THE LOVE LEGEND 93
he angry because she had called up Bill? If that was
so he had no right to be angry. He ought to trust
her. But but her mind was in a disorder of sur-
prise and conjecture, and the weighted ache in her
breast grew heavier to carry every minute.
Nita's affair just escaped a successful climax.
Toward the last of the summer she saw Howard
every night, talked to him, listened to his views on
love, marriage, and other emotions and institutions.
They discussed ideas impersonally, as if neither had
a direct interest in the other's future. They planned
their own home without admitting to each other that
they were thinking of living in it together. Howard
had very definite notions about everything pertaining
to matrimony, from the position his wife would hold
in the family to the location of the ice-box in the kit-
chen. He told Nita all these things, but never pro-
posed to her.
He left for the west three days before Nita was to
depart for New York. As he took a midnight train,
he ordered a taxi to come to the Harris home at eleven-
fifteen. They spent their last evening together walk-
ing by the lake, talking vaguely of their future, ex-
changing shy compliments. At eleven they came back
to the house and sat down on the porch. Howard's
bags were piled in one corner.
"I sure have seen a lot of you this summer."
"Wonder when we'll meet again?" A heavy feeling
was beginning in Nita's breast. She had thought he
would surely propose on this last night. "Probably
never."
"Oh yes, we will. We'll meet again, all right."
94 THE LOVE LEGEND
"When we're old. Won't it be funny."
A cab turned the corner and stopped in front of the
house.
"There's my taxi. Say, Nita I've got to go. Say
listen, don't you worry about our not seeing each
other again. We will alright. And it won't be long.
Listen, you'll write lots."
His eyes were eager and shining. If he would only
say something about marriage. She felt herself to be
hanging her whole personality about his neck. He
couldn't go.
He came close and looked down at her in silence.
"Goodbye," he said in a choked voice. He was go-
ing to kiss her. She didn't move. He bent. The taxi
gave a snort. He started, dropped his kiss on the end
of her nose, stumbled over his bags, knocked his hat
off over the banister, cursed silently to himself,
picked up his bags, recovered his hat, and trudged up
the walk to his taxi.
"Goodbye," called Nita.
"Goodbye. Say, Nita, you'll have a lot of patience,
won't you?"
"Yes."
The taxi chugged off.
VI
Mrs. Partridge and Helene, Mrs. de Remy and lit-
tle Paul, Mrs. Field and Mary, were to assist the Har-
ris family in seeing Nita and Dizzy safely off for the
east.
Sari telephoned and promised to come and see them
off too. So they were looking forward to seeing her.
And when they had almost given her up she came
THE LOVE LEGEND 95
rushing into the station attended by a very beautiful
Jewish boy of about her own age.
There was just time to kiss Nita and Dizzy when
the train pulled out. Then Ward turned and hugged
Sari.
"It's nice to see you. I'm almost glad you went
away because seeing you now helps make up for los-
ing Dizzy and Nita."
"Ward, you're a dear. I believe I have missed you.
You're the only one, though."
"Mother. You must have missed mother!"
"Oh Ward, you darling stupid. Her, least of all.
Here, I want to present Cecil to you." She called the
dark-eyed youth and introduced him to her mother and
Ward with an air of pride as Mr. Cecil De Jonghe.
"But Sari," said her mother in a nervous undertone,
while Ward was talking to the boy, "isn't he Jewish?"
"Really, I don't think I've ever asked him," said
Sari.
"Well, I hope he's not," said Mrs. Harris fervently.
"How long have you known him."
"Oh ages." Sari's manner took on a brilliant vague-
ness like the reflection of a star in a moving pool.
, "Did you know him before you left home?"
"Well, not exactly!"
"Not exactly? I don't understand. You don't
know a person exactly or inexactly. Either you did
or you didn't know him, and if you didn't know him
you must have met him since you left home, and so
you can't have known him ages!"
For a moment Mrs. Harris' attention was distracted
from the question by her admiration of her own logi-
cal reasoning. Before she could recapitulate, Mrs.
Partridge, Mrs. de Remy and the rest of the horde
96 THE LOVE LEGEND
from Lakeshore swarmed in and took possession.
Ward and Sari had only a moment for talk.
"Darling, you must come and see me in a couple of
days. I've got the sweetest place! And loads to tell
you."
"I'm crazy to. Sari, when can I come?"
"Don't bring mother, and you must promise not to
give me away unless I let you, if I show you, but I
am simply crazy to have a good long talk with you."
"I'll come any time, Sari, I can hardly wait."
"I'll call you up."
VII
Ward and her mother went sadly back to Lakeshore.
All the way on the train Mrs. Harris talked of how
strange the house would seem without so many girls.
And over and over in Ward's thoughts ran the hope-
ful wish that she would find a message from Rod at
home, a letter, a telegram, a telephone call.
But there was none. She walked through the
empty rooms from which youth seemed to have fled.
She was not going back to college that fall. She would
sit at home waiting, waiting, while her mother in a
hundred little ways would remind her of the love
legend, unconscious that the hero of it had already
come and gone.
BOOK TWO
SARI
CHAPTER I
I
THE quarters in which Sari had elected to set up
her establishment consisted of the only "room with a
bath" in a small rooming house. A muddy mustard
colored building, hung on the outlying fringe of the
business district which surrounded the loop, and par-
ticularly dingy in appearance, even for Clark street,
it was necessarily called the Grand Central Hotel.
In order to penetrate to her apartment. Sari as-
cended three steps directly from the sidewalk, un-
locked a door that stood at the right of the entrance
to the office, went up a flight of stairs and turned to
the right, where she could discover the knob of her
door by feeling around in a very dark hallway.
Here, green and gold heavily bombarded her. In-
tended for the bridal chamber, an artful effort had
been made by Mr. Cheez, the proprietor, to give the
room the air of a parlor. There was a carpet of thick
grayish green, lace curtains at the windows, and a
solid-looking oak armchair. In spite of this, however,
the bed bounded to the eye first, radiating its yellow
into the green and gold scheme a swell brass bed,
as Mr. Cheez observed. And all along the green walls
wriggling lines of thin gilt hung down like starved
snakes.
An extension of the house telephone stood just out-
side of Sari's door. When anyone rang her up, an
ear-splitting buzzing began at her door, impelled by
the colored maid of the establishment, who answered
99
100 THE LOVE LEGEND
all calls. Sari then flung a kimona around herself,
being nearly always in a state of undress, when she
was so summoned, and ran into the hall where she
conversed in as cryptic a manner as possible in order
to thwart the colored maid, who always listened on
the line.
The colored maid had a method peculiar to herself
of reading hand-writing, so that Sari often had her
mail confused with that of a person, who bore the
name of Miss A. Austine Eisenstein. Mr. D. E Pren-
dergast, a stout amiable gentleman, conscientiously
comic, was always getting letters which the colored
maid slipped under Sari's door under the delusion that
Prendergast looked like Harris.
Others who passed daily through the doors of the
Grand Central Hotel were noted by Sari. There was
a shoe clerk, true to type in his slim, dapper, suave
beauty, and a fat bushy-browed worker in a mail-
order house, one of those girls, so numerous among
the working women in large cities, who having neither
kith nor kin of their own, build from the people thrown
about them a vicarious family whom they love, con-
fide in, and make a convenience of.
But once inside her door with the bolt turned, Sari
felt a new sense of absolute liberty. She would bounce
up and down on the bed in her joy at being alone and
undisturbed.
n
The Wilson dancers performed on a runway and
stage leading out into Lake Michigan from the ter-
raced dining room of a luxurious north side hotel.
THE LOVE LEGEND 101
Lake, sky, and sometimes the moon made an effective
back drop in the radiance of a magnificent spotlight.
Sari danced as easily and carelessly before the au-
dience as she had done in the studio.
Opening night was given a frill of excitement by the
advent of some reporters. At first the girls thought
of themselves as great actresses besieged by the press.
When the reporters asked for Barbara Handbook, who
was making her debut as well as Sari, she observed
languidly, with heavy ennui; "These newspaper men,
I really haven't time to bother with them." But it de-
veloped that her father, the respectable professor from
the University, had been arrested on a charge more
than ordinarily racy and they wanted to get the story
from her angle. The Wilson dancers were not men-
tioned in the account next day.
Sari enjoyed the rush, the make-up, the dressing-
room atmosphere, even more than the performance it-
self. And most of all she liked the new sense of free-
dom, the feeling that she could be out as much and as
long as she liked without accounting to a querulous
mother.
Sari was completely happy. Every night she came
home, opened the downstairs inner door with her
latch key, and sped up the stairs to her room. Once
inside she experienced the thrill of being all alone
again. Sometimes she stopped at the Greek restau-
rant next door where she took her meals and had a
supper before she went to bed. She was never lonely.
In the morning she was accustomed to get up about
nine o'clock and walk through Lincoln park before
breakfast. Occasionally she walked along the lake for
half an hour or more before coming back to eat.
Afternoons she went to the studio to practice.
102 THE LOVE LEGEND
III
One morning, when she had been enjoying this exist-
ence for a week, she walked further than usual in
the shining silver sunlight. On Lake Shore drive
she sat on the stone steps leading down to the lake's
edge. Chin on her hands, elbows on knees staring
into the blinding blue, she became aware that a young
man had been walking by her several times. Her
thoughts were on her salary. She was laying it out in
parcels, making budgets.
When she looked at the watch on her wrist she saw
that it was almost eleven o'clock. She had had noth-
ing to eat. So, assuming a businesslike carriage she
began to walk home hurriedly. But some sixth sense
was urging her that there had been a young man in her
picture for some time. She didn't know when she had
first known that he was there. She looked over her
shoulder involuntarily. Yes, there was some one back
of her. Turning hastily down a side street, she walked
on, but this time her thoughts would not go away
from the young man. He was rather attractively
dressed, she thought, but at that distance she could
not see his face. He had on a bright tan overcoat,
almost yellow, a black and white checked suit, and a
fall hat of green pulled rakishly over one side of his
face. Yes, on the whole his looks appealed to Sari.
She decided to look around again.
He was still following. At her second glance back
he hastened his footsteps and soon caught up with
her, bared his head gallantly and remarked, that it
was a lovely morning for a stroll.
"Don't you know you shouldn't speak to strange
young women?" said Sari severely, glancing at him.
THE LOVE LEGEND 103
He was hardly older than Sari herself, with a clear
olive skin, great dark eyes, and black curly hair that
waved back from his forehead. When he removed his
hat, Sari saw at once that he was Jewish.
"I couldn't help it," declared the young Jew gal-
lantly. "I saw you on the beach, and I made up my
mind that I must know you; have followed you from
Lincoln park. I watched you sitting by the lake. I
have written a poem about it see?" He exhibited a
bit of paper which Sari took and examined.
"I don't see how that's about me," she said, "but
you have the cock-eyed artistic soul. I feel it. We
are friends. Something impelled me to look around
to you just then. Some great force. My father was
a writer. Perhaps I can help you!"
"If you only would," said the young man fervently.
His abrupt phrases, vaguely foreign-sounding, were
peppered with flagrant Americanisms, and his manner
was intensely that of the college boy a sharply out-
lined impersonation. "See, here is my card." He took
out of his pocket a bit of pasteboard on which was en-
graved "Mr. Cecil H. De Jonghe." "Tell me all about
yourself," he begged. "Are you a Chicago girl? Do
you live here? I am anxious to know."
Here was an audience for a completely new role.
Her manner became earnest the serious young girl
making her way in the world. She seized his arm and
said with gusto:
"I am just going to have my breakfast. Will you
come with me? I eat at a little Greek restaurant over
at the other side of the park. I will tell you all about
myself. But you must let me pay for my own cock-
eyed meal. It is one of my principles never to let
anyone pay for any of my meals. I am strictly inde-
pendent."
Mr. De Jonghe promised reluctantly, dreading the
104 THE LOVE LEGEND
waiters. They found a little table, with the counter
close by, behind which white-aproned Greeks passed
and re-passed polishing glasses, bringing sandwiches
and soups. He looked at Sari to begin the story of
her life.
"The soup in here is awfully good," said Sari.
"You'd better have some. This is Thursday, so they
call it spaghetti soup. On Sunday it's chicken soup,
on Monday barley, on Tuesday tomato, on Wednes-
day bean, on Thursday spaghetti, on Friday clam, on
Saturday something else, I forget what, but it's all the
same cock-eyed soup. You'd better try it."
Mr. De Jonghe tried it and Sari ordered an enor-
mous breakfast with much energy. "Do you live all
alone?" asked Mr. De Jonghe.
"Yes, I live all by myself in this great big city. I
am strictly independent. I support myself, without
any help from my people, who do not understand me.
They wanted me to go to college and cram myself full
of facts and vulgar knowledge, and had none of them
the slightest conception of what art really meant to
me. I made up my mind never to submit to them, and
so I ran away from home."
She was forming her sentences like his, a trick of
imitation she acquired easily.
"Poor little girl," said Mr. De Jonghe. "How brave
of you!"
"Oh no, it wasn't brave," said Sari conscious that
the denial made her case for bravery so much stronger.
"I just felt that I had to go. My art was stronger
than I, I left home and mother without the usual tears
that sentimental girls shed on leaving home. I hope,
Mr. De Jonghe, that you are not a sentimentalist."
Good heavens no, Mr. De Jonghe was not a senti-
mentalist. Being vague in his mind as to all this im-
THE LOVE LEGEND 105
plied, he replied quickly that he was a pianist, study-
ing at a well known school on the North side but that
he played every musical instrument that he had ever
attempted with considerable ease.
"Isn't that wonderful," said Sari with enthusiasm.
"By ear?"
"Yes. Violin, piano, harp, cornet, banjo, ukelele
anything. I am studying the piano, now, though. My
father, too, wanted me to go to college, but I could
not see the use as I was anxious to begin to study the
piano. So I came to Chicago "
"Where is your home?"
"In St. Louis. I left my many friends there. What
wonderful times we used to have " a short retrospect
seemed to float before Mr. De Jonghe. He sighed.
Then came back to Sari's affairs. "But didn't your
mother dislike it, when you told her you were leaving
her?"
"She couldn't stop me," Sari replied. "Something
sustained me. The thought that my career was the
thing that I was meant for made me strong enough to
stand against her."
"What are you studying?" asked Mr. De Jonghe.
The question came as something of a shock, a good
bit of disappointment to Sari. She had been secretly
hoping that Mr. De Jonghe would tell her that he had
seen her dance and had recognized her.. The thought
that she had been existing in his mind as a mere stu-
dent for nearly half an hour annoyed her exceedingly.
"Studying! I am appearing with the Carlotta Wil-
son dancers. You may have heard of them!"
Mr. De Jonghe had heard of them. Good heavens,
an actress, a dancer sat across the table from him.
He trembled. He could hardly bear to confess that he
had never seen them, but hastily mentioned that he had
106 THE LOVE LEGEND
seen every show in the Loop, and had looked on Ger-
trude Hoffmann, Pavlowa, the Morgan dancers, and
the Ziegfield Follies in former years.
"A man doesn't have time to go every place in this
town, and I've been intending to go and see them, but
just haven't had the time. I'll sure come out tonight,
though."
"I think you'll enjoy seeing us dance. One of our
girls was with Pavlowa a season, and another was with
the Metropolitan ballet. They are all talented dan-
cers. I was lucky to get in with them, but I have been
studying with Carlotta Wilson for two years, and could
have gone with her six months ago, if my mother had
not objected."
Mr. De Jonghe stirred his coffee nervously. He
squirmed uncomfortably in his chair while he won-
dered whether this wonderful actress had been snapped
up by some other man. Perhaps she was only
flirting with him. He hitched forward at the thought;
would it be all right to enquire whether or not she was
engaged? No, that might look like a proposal of
marriage. He knew that you must use great care with
women or they snap you up before you know it. He
wondered how he could lead the subject around to love.
Sari chatting on about her career and her plans was
scarcely heard in the absorption of this new problem.
Finally when she paused after making some remark
about her sisters he asked,
"Are any of your sisters married?"
"No. Ward, she's just two years older than I am
has been engaged I think, but Nita has never been in
love, though she's awfully old. Way past twenty-
two."
Here was his opening. He looked down at his plate,
THE LOVE LEGEND 107
twisted his fork, smiled and asked as archly as he
could.
"I suppose you have been in love oodles of times?"
The archness was a failure, but Sari did not notice
the tenseness in his manner. She had worked herself
up conversationally to a point where she was anxious
to reveal anything that was suggested to her, and
more if possible.
"You see," she said kitting her brows and bending
absorbedly to her task of exploring her own psychol-
ogy, "I don't think I was much interested in boys
until I was about seventeen, then I decided that I
would like to be popular with them. So I tried it and
I was quite successful. My junior year in high school
I tore around with eighteen youngsters. It sounds
ridiculous when I think of it now, and I'm sure I don't
know how I ever kept it up. It was a regular game
and not a very honorable game at that. My health
broke down under the strain and I almost had to quit
school. I found out how it was done and I decided
that it wasn't much fun after all. It has its disad-
vantages. You have to allow yourself to be bored
nine-tenths of the time.
"My next experiment," continued Sari, neglecting
her food in the interest she felt in her subject, "was
in making them fall in love with me. It was fun
thinking of a system. I might say that I have an
older sister that is nearly perfect in the art, and by
imitating her I soon learned how it was done. But I
was simply overwhelmed when they did fall."
Frankie Field took on a faint romantic touch in her
imagination as she spoke. "Not one of them was any-
thing in my young life but even so, the only thing that
108 THE LOVE LEGEND
saved me from marrying I was terribly conscience
stricken, was that I am not polygamous."
Mr. De Jonghe, whose mouth had dropped open,
did not tell her critically that she meant polyandrous.
He was regarding her with an adoration that had no
time for such nice exactions. Up to this time he had
believed that gentile girls had no morals. The re-
cital of Sari's scruples thrilled him with the sense that
he was becoming a broad-minded man of the world.
He understood her so well.
He sighed.
"My experience has been something like yours," he
said. "I started stepping out when I was about thir-
teen. From the beginning I laughed at the idea of one
girl. I thought that association was the thing. I have
always had a craving for variety, an acquaintance with
.girls of every type. It certainly has been broadening.
Yet I cannot say whether or not it has been the best
policy as I have suffered many disillusionments and
have lots of times lost respect for the whole species."
"Isn't that dreadful," said Sari, leaning her head
on her elbow and giving him her whole attention.
"But didn't you ever fall in love?"
"Naturally I liked some better than others, and
even thought of marriage in some cases, but never
seriously. Another link in my reasoning is applying
the old adage to all females, it's something about com-
paring a woman with a street car; if you miss one
another will be along soon. Now, please don't get
conceited when I tell you that you are the first girl
in my experience that has ever seemed not to fit
that old adage. Well, it's hard to try and explain big
things"
THE LOVE LEGEND 109
III
The waiter hovered behind the young man.
"Two checks," said Sari, holding up two fingers.
Poor Mr. Cecil De Jonghe reddened to his ears.
"Won't you let me pay," he begged Sari in a hurried
undertone, but Sari shook her head.
The waiter, thinking to help Sari to get her dinner
paid for by shaming the young man, bent his head
near the young man's ear and said in an enquiring tone
and imperfect English, "Two checkka?"
"Two cock-eyed checks," said Sari briskly holding
up two fingers again and shaking her bobbed hair
about, as she nodded twice emphatically. "Oh please,"
breathed Mr. De Jonghe, looking down at his plate in
shame and agony.
The waiter's honest Greek face looked commiserat-
ingly at Sari and he bent nearer the young man's
ear and almost shouting, "Two Checks? Two Checks?
No?"
Poor Mr. De Jonghe almost put his curly head in
his plate in his distress, and desire to ignore the
waiter.
"Two checks," said Sari again, triumphing in her
independence. The waiter shrugged, glanced contemp-
tuously at the young man, lifted his eyes to heaven to
witness the meanness of some young men, when dining
with beautiful young girls, and clipped the two checks
which he drew out of his pocket.
Mr. De Jonghe, after this ordeal felt quite unequal
to the task of passing the Greek at the counter, when
they should pay the checks, and in his fear of offend-
ing Sari, and his great sympathy with her ideals, and
his enormous respect for her character and independ-
110 THE LOVE LEGEND
ence, suffered acutely for some moments while Sari
was imparting further embroidered information.
"I made up my mind to give up everything, and just
work. I worked hard at the studio. My family would
have taken those hard hours from me, but I was able
to resist their entreaties to have me be a mere doll at
home and do nothing "
CHAPTER II
THAT night Mr. De Jonghe made his appearance at
the hotel where Sari danced and waited for her after-
ward. From that time it became his custom to break-
fast with her every morning, practice his piano and
take his lesson while Sari worked in the studio, take
her to dinner, escort her to the hotel, wait for her and
take her home.
Sari had purchased a nile green gown, which had
caught her eye in a window on Michigan avenue.
There was a long tight bodice, of green, orange and
dull gold like the skin of a brilliant tropical reptile.
Clad in this costume it became her nightly habit
after her part in the evening's performance was done
to appear on the ball-room of the hotel at precisely a
quarter of twelve escorted by Mr. Cecil De Jonghe,
smartly and exquisitely clad. Wearing the most com-
pletely haughty poise ever achieved by two members
of the human race simultaneously, they would follow
a waiter to a small table, and wait like august poten-
tates for the music to start.
Wearing their conception of themselves as world-
worn souls, they danced conscientiously until the
music stopped, and then climbed on a bus and rode
part way home. A mile from the hotel, they generally
got off and walked, parting reluctantly at her door
at about two o'clock in the morning.
Ill
112 THE LOVE LEGEND
II
One hot night after they had left the bus they re-
membered the moon on the lake. With a disregard
for park policemen not usually discovered in people
of such amazing worldliness as these two they walked
over and sat down on the steps overlooking the lake,
very near the place where Mr. De Jonghe had first set
eyes upon Sari.
"And to think that I didn't see you at all," said
Sari. "My what an age ago it seems."
"Just three weeks next Thursday," said Cecil.
"Goodness, it seems longer than that, I feel as if I
had known you forever."
"Me too. It's because we've been together so
much."
At their feet the slanting gray stone break water
slid imperceptibly into the smooth and luminous blue
surface of the sea, with a slab of gold laid on it by the
rising moon. The black and silent park behind them
lay like the sleeping coast of some romantic island in
the south seas.
Sari began to feel drowsy.
"Rest your head on my shoulder," offered Cecil
earnestly.
"It's like my home. We always have the lake. It
seems like part of me sometimes," said Sari. "It does
to all of us. We've lived beside it so long, and it
grows on you someway so that you miss it if you don't
see it."
"I sure wish we could stay out here all night."
Sari sat up.
"Well, why shouldn't we?"
Well, really there was no reason. Who on earth
THE LOVE LEGEND 113
would be the wiser if they did or did not. Sari set-
tled back comfortably in his arm. They were silent
looking at the moon.
"Wonder if it will get cold toward morning?"
"You can have my coat if it does!"
Another silence. Sari dozed till Cecil earnestly
kissed a certain dimple he admired in her cheek.
"Isn't it great out here. Why didn't we think of
this before."
"I wonder what time it is."
"I bet it's hot over at the Grand Central." The
waves lapped very softly against the stone. Cecil
kissed a dimple again. A policeman on a bicycle rode
ponderously past, incongruous, making his silent
round, tinging their idyl with the comic. In the
bushes back of them it seemed as if strange figures
moved.
Resting against him Sari'sl eyes traveled out into the
sea where a lighthouse twinkled, blending its gloom
with the pattern of the stars; in the breezeless night
they seemed to dance, the only active things in the
whole still world. To the south, another white light
winked off and on, alternating red. She fell to watch-
ing it dreamily, counting fifteen-sixteen-red, one-
two-three-four white she slept.
Cecil held her tenderly, almost fearfully in his arms.
He kissed her again just above her lips. Long since
the moon had left the sea, and shone high on its west-
ward journey. Again the kindly policeman rode by,
silently, his great haunches moving rhythmically as he
pedaled. She stirred. "It's getting light " The pale
blue attenuation of dawn was being poured into the
thick darkness. Out of the eerie lavender cloudiness
the scene was taking form.
"Sari, I want to kiss you awfully."
114 THE LOVE LEGEND
With a sudden realization that her nerves were
straining for his arms she drew him to her in a kiss
that swept through them like a draft through a red
coal fire.
"Oh Sari," and "Oh Cecil."
Ill
She broke away from him. "Look it's nearly day."
He caught her to him again. They watched the mists
clear off the lake.
"Let's run down to the lake and wash our hands and
get washed up for breakfast. What time is it?"
"It's nearly five."
They splashed their hands in the cool lake water
and bathed their faces.
"I'm simply cock-eyed I'm so hungry. I wonder
what time the restaurant's open."
"Some of them stay open all night. I wouldn't want
to go until after six, though."
They strolled along the paved beach.
"Everything is wonderful at this time of the morn-
ing," said Sari. "Hasn't it been fun. I wouldn't have
missed it for anything in the world. Poor dear old
cock-eyed mother would simply stand on her ear if she
knew it."
"Older people are a bore, sometimes," remarked
Cecil. "Not the slightest possible harm in our stay-
ing out all night, only every one would lift up their
hands in horror if they knew it."
"Let's play ball," proposed Sari. "Let's roll up our
handkerchiefs and play ball."
They tossed the improvised ball back and forth for
THE LOVE LEGEND 115
a few minutes. Then Cecil ran up to Sari and drew
her down to a seat on the stone and kissed her.
"Will you ever forget tonight I mean last night?"
"Never," promised Sari. "It's been simply perfect.
I don't think I'll go to the studio this afternoon. I
think I'll telephone them that I've got to stay home
and sleep."
"Poor darling. Are you tired?"
"A little. I think we might go and have breakfast
now."
They got up to go. Sari put on her hat. The sun
coming up over the lake, blazed its own trail by a
streak of golden fire that glimmered upon the water.
Toward the town the long line of the city pleasure
pier, with its colors showing clear in the smokeless
atmosphere looked like the efforts of a child in crude
crayons. Curving toward them from the south the
lake touched the shore of the Oak street beach where
a spot of sand shone yellow with the sun upon it.
"Let's look just once," whispered Cecil, "It's so
beautiful." They wandered slowly across the park,
and into an unfamiliar Greek restaurant. Sari was
becoming more sleepy every minute. She was only
able to eat a grape fruit, but Cecil ordered a large
repast. When they had eaten, Sari proposed that she
go home alone.
"I think it looks better on the whole," she observed.
"Not that I'm at all ashamed of being out all night,
but some of those people there are sort of insinuat-
ing."
"Well, I'll come by in fifteen minutes and you can
wave to me from your window that you are all right,"
said Cecil anxiously.
"I'll let up the blind fast, and pull it down," said
Sari.
116 THE LOVE LEGEND
IV
This satisfactory plan worked out perfectly, and
Cecil went to his room, and Sari rolled into bed with-
out having encountered any one. At noon she called
the studio on the telephone to say that she would not
be down, and went back to bed. At about five she
wakened to find a letter under her door. She recog-
nized Cecil's writing.
Nine o'clock.
Dearest Sari,
I am about to go against one of the things which I
have always practiced, but you will forgive me be-
cause this is an exception to the rule. I hardly know
how to start or to state things clearly to you. It is
the first time I have ever been in such a condition and
advice is what I desire and your own advice. I have
carefully thought over the subject for some time so
that the whole thing is not, as you may suppose, ex-
temporaneous.
Oh yes, it's all about a girl as you can well imagine.
(Don't pass away yet; the worst is yet to come.)
Since I have been here in Chicago and especially since
I have met you I have had a good chance to do a lot
of thinking about the uncertain future which lies
ahead. My thoughts have been along the average
possibilities, nothing else. I am on the way to my
twentieth year with nothing tangible to look forward
to except money, old age, probably a good to society,
and ordinary things like that. But what's the good of
money and things if you can't be happy late in life?
There is a certain young lady whom I care for more
than I can tell you, more than she would like to be-
THE LOVE LEGEND 117
lieve. She would probably think I was kidding her if
I wrote her along those lines.
Again I like her so well that I even fear to lose her
friendship by writing indiscreet or undiplomatic let-
ters to her at this time. If I can't have her love now
or never I certainly want to keep her friendship al-
ways. Therefore I hesitate to write anything that
might diminish our friendship.
I cannot hope nor do I desire anything of a binding
promise at present. Oh no, that's in the future. Re-
member this is not a puppy love affair, but it has
grown out of sincere understanding and calm reason-
ing.
Old dear, I am going to try and get some sleep now.
Please don't keep me in suspense and love from
CECIL.
Sari read the letter over twice and then tucked it
under her pillow, smiling happily. It would be nice to
be married before any of the other girls were married.
She liked Cecil better than anyone she had ever met.
She couldn't bear to be away from him for a minute,
no one understood her like he did. Yes, she loved him.
With this satisfactory thought she dozed for fifteen
minutes longer, and then got up.
She had not come out of her bath when the buzzer
up above her door, followed by a loud knocking on the
door, announced in the person of the colored maid
that there was a special delivery letter for her. She
opened this eagerly.
Dear Sari,
I have always tried to keep my will power above
sentiment. Because if I ever gave it out to a girl and
118 THE LOVE LEGEND
allowed my sentiment to overcome my reason then
should it happen that the girl would not be mine, it
would just naturally wreck my life. You say bosh,
probably, but never forget that no one knows one bet-
ter than one knows oneself. I think I know my fail-
ings, abilities and what not.
I have known scores of fellows who never held a job
when single, but after marriage or even engagement
the idea of something in the future changed their
whole lives.
Please don't forget reasoning, love or anything else
is not a matter of mere years. There have been infant
prodigies as long as the world has existed. I am not
an infant prodigy. I just want you to note that it is
the man not the years.
You really didn't know me awfully well as regarded
my past before I met you. I mean that, modestly
speaking, I have crowded into my life between thir-
teen and nineteen as much as the average man does
up until at least thirty.
I am going to turn in and try and get some sleep
now, old dear, so, so long, and won't you forget about
all my advice and everything but, Oh yes, I must tell
you that the girl of my clear reasoning was you
The tail on the u of the final word trailed off down
the page and there was no name signed. Sari was de-
lighted. She dressed as hurriedly as possible and then
ran out to the telegraph station and sent the following
message to Mr. Cecil De Jonghe:
"Everything fine and dandy. Received both your
letters. Much love. SARI."
This message so relieved the distraught mind of Mr.
Cecil De Jonghe that he jumped up from the bed
THE LOVE LEGEND - 119
where he had been trying to sleep all day rushed to
the telephone and tried to reach Sari. But she had
gone to the hotel for the evening, and so there was
nothing to do but dress and follow her there.
CHAPTER III
I
WHEN Anita and Dizzy had been gone for two days
it seemed to Ward as if they had been gone for weeks.
There was nothing to do and no one to talk to. Why,
why did she not hear from Rod? She thought of him
constantly. With his departure she had definitely
made her decision: he was the prince. And now there
was nothing to do but wait and hope.
She was glad when Mary Field broke the morning's
monotony. Mary, too, had found her prince that sum-
mer. And with the departure of little Bill Wicker for
an apartment in Kenwood she felt herself as deserted
as Ward. Into the three casual calls, the automat-
ically tossed compliments, and the imitation love looks
she had woven her love legend. And the warped ma-
terial on the loom looked to her like a shining cloth
of gold.
Mary seated herself on a straight chair, crooked her
neck in the attitude that she considered best exhibited
her profile, and began to monologue:
Wicker had understood her. He had a sort of in-
tuitive feeling for her that was so delicate it had
never been put into words. Though he had never
actually spoken of his love for her a woman's intui-
tion was infallible. She knew how he felt. Besides,
why had he called on her if he was not harboring mat-
rimonial intentions? Did he consider that she was the
sort of girl to be trifled with? No, she could not be-
lieve that. That was not her reputation. She knew
120
THE LOVE LEGEND 121
that too many men had gazed with longing eyes from
afar, not daring to come too near because they were
too poor to marry. It was that she had not encour-
aged him enough. He was neglecting her to see if she
would repent. Her dignity and the garment of sweet
virginity around her roused an awe in him that had
made him afraid to speak without some word of en-
couragement. And she had withheld it. Not because
she had not favored his suit, but because her maidenly
feelings and her modesty had prevented it. He would
come back.
The telephone rang.
It was Sari. Ward was delighted. They arranged
to lunch together, and Ward turned back to Mary who
now rose and took her leave with a few platitudes
about how lonesome it must be with the three other
girls away.
II
At luncheon Sari announced that she was engaged.
"But Sari, you're not in love with that little dark-
eyed child you had with you at the station!"
"Yes, I am. And we are going to get married."
"Why, Sari!"
"What?"
"He's only a baby."
"He's older than I am!"
"Isn't he Jewish?"
"Well?"
"Why, but Sari, you wouldn't marry a Jew, would
you?"
"Why not?"
"Well," Ward's definitely formed ideals about love
122 THE LOVE LEGEND
struggled with the ideas she had gained from observ-
ing certain sets at the University snub Jewish stu-
dents. "Of course, I suppose, if you loved him. But
you haven't known him long enough to know whether
you do or not."
"Oh yes I have, Ward. I know you think you've
had an awful lot of experience with men, but in some
ways I bet I know more about them than you do."
"How?"
"Well, for instance, you've never been insulted,
have you?"
"Insulted!"
"I mean if a man practically asked you to be his
mistress what would you do?"
"Sari, what a horrible word. Where did you hear
it?"
"Oh, Ward, don't pretend you're shocked. That's
only a hang-over from things mother has told you.
What would you do?"
Ward considered. Sari was right. She wasn't
shocked. She saw it when Sari pointed it out, but be-
fore she had thought she was. "I should think it
would be an interesting experience. That sort of thing
would really try you so that you could know what
kind of material you were made of."
Sari was uninterested in this view.
"Well a man did insult me that way once, last sum-
mer. A manager from New York. He told me he
would put me on the stage if I would love him, and he
made it all pretty clear. But he wasn't attractive."
"Well, Cecil hasn't insulted you has he?"
"Good heavens, no."
"I've heard that Jews never take Christian girls
really seriously. And that they try to, well, lead them
on, and then desert them."
THE LOVE LEGEND 123
"I'm sure that isn't true. Besides Cecil isn't a
regular Jew. He's not orthodox. Why, just imagine,
he's never been inside of a synagogue. His people
don't believe in anything. They are like father, sort of
socialists. His father had even been to hear father
talk when he used to give his Sunday evening talks."
"But Sari, you're not radical. None of us are radi-
cal except Dizzy. All of us fancy we are in love at
your age and mine, I believe, but it isn't always
serious."
"Well, it is in this case, and you can just break the
news to mother that it's going to come off."
"Not soon, though?"
"Well, I may go to New York with the Carlotta
Wilson dancers late in November. I'm not sure when
it will be. Cecil wants to get established some place."
They talked all afternoon. Ward took the news
home with a heavy heart.
Ill
Cecil himself had no such definite ideas about mar-
riage as Sari had read into his epistles. But Sari's
whole-hearted acceptance of him had carried him be-
yond his depth. He was afraid that his family whom
he loved deeply would never forgive him if he married
a gentile. But he hoped that perhaps his father's ad-
miration for Tyndall Harris might mitigate their prej-
udice in time. He was certain that he loved Sari, ir-
retrievably and devotedly. His only worry was about
his family and his future income. He wanted to have
his career well started before he married. It made
him very happy to know that Sari was waiting for
him, and that in ten or twelve years they might be
124 THE LOVE LEGEND
united in marriage, at which time his parents would
have learned to love Sari, and he would be making
enough to buy her beautiful things. Sometimes, sit-
ting with Sari desperation would seize him. He would
long earnestly for a fortune until his mind wandered
to something else. But most of the time he evenly
and happily looked forward to a very distant wedding
date.
"Oh Sari, everything will be wonderful for us some
day. Just have patience and wait."
"I will love you and be beautiful for you. And
take care of you."
" 'Member that story I wrote. The ending was the
best part of it. 'Member it?"
"Yes, I remember, but how did it go?"
" 'You need some one to take care of you,' said Bill.
'How about you?' said Marian. Don't you like it?"
"No, I think it's so bad!"
"And I think it's so goodl"
They laughed and kissed each other.
"I wish I had a lip stick."
"You don't need a lip stick. Why none of the
really smart dames use lip sticks." He put his cheek
against hers suddenly, and stopped the scolding he
had begun. "I've got to get a lot of money, some
way. Just got to."
IV
Ward, tired and nervously exhausted by her long
day, did not break the news to her mother until dinner
was nearly over.
THE LOVE LEGEND 125
Mrs. Harris stared straight ahead of her as if frozen
with terror. "I knew something terrible would hap-
pen to her. Poor child! Poor little child, in the
clutches of that terrible Jew."
"It's dreadful isn't it?"
"Why did I ever let her leave home!" She sat
silent while Ward made a pretense of finishing her
dinner. "I must telephone her at once."
"She's at the theater now. But I got her to prom-
ise to come home for luncheon tomorrow to see you ! "
Mrs. Harris spent a sleepless night, alternately
praying and weeping. She could not conquer her fear
that she would be unable to influence Sari.
At luncheon there was no emotional scene. In some
ways Mrs. Harris had the adaptability of youth. She
controlled her feelings, now, and was ready almost des-
perately to use any means to keep Sari from commit-
ting so rash an act as a marriage at her age with this
young Jew. The very dignity which she gave to it,
however, enhanced the romance of the situation in
Sari's eyes. The one thing she had rather dreaded
was that her mother would treat it lightly, as a boy
and girl affair. This gravity which underlay her
mother's manner, thrilled her with a sense of her own
importance. She had often felt grown up away from
home. This was the first time she had felt an adult
with her mother.
At luncheon nothing was said about the great news.
When they were seated afterward in the living room,
Mrs. Harris finally brought up the subject. She
asked questions to which it had never occurred to Sari
to give serious consideration, such as what Cecil's
family would think, how they were to live afterward?
Sari's imagination had been pre-occupied with the
glamour of romance. Now it leaped to the glamour
126 THE LOVE LEGEND
of house-keeping, her importance as a woman among
women.
The affair climaxed swiftly, solely through the
stupidity of Sari's own family. They had be-
come so alarmed over what she might do, that they
went to lengths to keep her from this folly. Soon after
she had found out where Sari lived, Mrs. Harris fol-
lowed her, and begged and pleaded all day. Ward
wept and pleaded. Sari was non-committal, enjoying
the sensation she was causing in a more or less heart-
less fashion. Her mother's tears did not move her
since she had seen them off and on during her life
over such things as her own failure to wear rubbers.
Ward's long arguments against it did not touch her
reasoning powers.
Nita dealt the deciding blow. She sent an impera-
tive telegram to Sari commanding her not to marry
Cecil and stating in strong terms her objection to hav-
ing a Jew in the family; Nita would have done better
if she had placed the affairs in the hands of Mrs. de
Remy. Sari was thoroughly moved. Her anger
blazed. She felt that she hated Nita. With the tele-
gram in her hand, she called Cecil on the telephone.
She would show Nita, the snob, and her whole family.
"Cecil," she said in a tremulous voice in the phone,
"if you want me at all, you'll have to take me now."
Poor bewildered little Cecil took her.
They were married that afternoon. A telegram was
sent to Nita; Mrs. Harris and Ward were informed
by telephone.
THE LOVE LEGEND 127
VI
And so Sari's curiosity about sex was gratified in a
respectable fashion. Her mother invaded Sari's green
room, which had become in reality a bridal chamber,
the next day, and tearfully made the best of things.
She accepted Cecil for a son-in-law. Cecil sweetly
allowed her to accept him. He was pre-occupied over
his own family who had sent no word of any kind,
though they too had been telegraphed the news.
Cecil, unlike Sari, loved his family with a devotion
that was deeply in his consciousness. They were
on his mind all the time. He could fancy that his
mother was hardly believing the news. She never
would accept disagreeable truths when they were at
first forced on her. "Maybe we get another telegram
saying it ain't true?" He could almost hear her say-
ing it to his father. He longed so to hear from them.
But, in all probability they were done with him for-
ever. His father had always said he would cast off
any child of his who married a gentile.
Cecil left Mrs. Harris with her newly wedded daugh-
ter and wandered by the lake. The white frilled waves
sounded dimly ironic like countless chuckles. He
would have to get a job and make some money im-
mediately. That was certain. Perhaps he could get
one playing the piano in a movie. His allowance from
home would stop, he knew. And a liberal allowance
it had been. He faintly regretted it. But Sari, his
wife, too had a claim on his loyalty, and he was
not sorry that he had married her; only worried, and
anxious to have things turn out for the best. He could
not live on the money she was making, and he couldn't
have her making more money than he, either.
128 THE LOVE LEGEND
Mrs. Harris, after drying her eyes, began to take an
interest in Sari's future. After all, it was interesting
to have a married daughter. It was the fate she de-
sired for all her girls. And Cecil was attractive, and
Sari had said he was not absolutely Jewish. Perhaps
he could be converted to Christianity. That young
Mrs. De Jonghe, in spite of early advantages, could
not precisely be said to be a Christian, did not occur
to her.
"And how much money is Cecil making?"
"He's not making anything now. But he's going to
get a job in a movie, playing the piano, and then he'll
make seventy or eighty dollars a week."
"Do moving picture pianists earn that much?"
"Well at first, he might just get about forty or fifty
dollars, but he's so talented that he's sure to get more
right away."
"I doubt it. How many young men of his age are
getting even forty dollars a week."
"But Cecil is exceptional."
"Well, I'm sure I hope the butcher and baker will
think so."
She repeated the conversation that night to Ward,
climaxing on "I told her that I hoped the butcher and
baker would think as much of Cecil as she does." It
seemed to her to have been an appropriately keen
thing to have said.
VII
Cecil did get a job playing in a moving picture
theater almost at once. One afternoon, when they
had been married nearly a week, he found some house-
keeping rooms half a block from the Oak street beach.
They were new. So new that the furniture was not
THE LOVE LEGEND 129
yet all in. An old house had been remodeled so that
two tiny apartments were made, one on the third, and
one on the second floor. Mr. Bixbie, the owner, and
his wife occupied the first floor. On the second floor
was a room which Mr. Bixbie's mother occupied and
the bathroom which everyone in the house would have
to use. The second floor apartment was sixty-five
dollars, and the third floor, sixty. Each had an airy
parlor with a bed which closed up into the wall, and a
large kitchen that would have to be used also for a
dining room.
They liked the upper one best, but by the time Cecil
could get Sari to look at it, on her way to the hotel, it
was rented, and an elderly couple were trying hard to
persuade Mr. Bixbie to rent them the second floor.
Sari and Cecil closed the deal, agreeing to move in the
next day, and paying a month's rent in advance.
"Do you want us to sign a lease?" asked Cecil with
a business-like air.
"No," said Mr. Bixbie, a solemn young man, whom
they suspected of having been married scarcely longer
than they. "I prefer to deal with people on their
honor. If you pay your rent each month in advance
that's all I ask for." It was evidently his first ex-
perience as a landlord, and he was taking it very se-
riously. "Now, of course, as long as the furniture
isn't all in this apartment you'll naturally be put to
some inconvenience, so we'll say the rent will begin
on the first of October, instead of tomorrow if that's
all right with you." He turned his head and howled
at the top of his voice, "Oh Tweetiel"
"Ya-as!" answered his wife from the next room.
"She'll tell you about the linens," explained Mr.
Bixbie.
Tweetie was a well corseted young woman with
130 THE LOVE LEGEND
large gentle brown eyes, and a small mouth. She pro-
nounced all her vowels perfectly, but in the wrong
places.
"Aow ya-as, eba-out the deshes. Wai, ah've gowt
ayv'rythen fexed." There was no dialect of any spe-
cial place, but she spoke with so much assurance that
Sari could not doubt that she had cultivated it.
They arranged to move in the next day, and then
Sari hurried off to the Carlotta Wilson dancers, and
Cecil to his moving picture theater.
WARD and Helene Partridge, in raincoats and slouch
hats, walked briskly down the boulevard. The as-
phalt pavement shining in the rain like a river, was
crossed at intervals with golden paths cast by the
round, electric moons that lighted the street.
Helene was clinging desperately to the love legend,
and bitterly condemning other girls for Shavian prac-
tices. She let her mind play with shuddering fasci-
nation on the practices of the courtezan, while scorn-
ing sex itself in her more self-satisfied moments.
"Yes, I think that a woman reaches her level, at-
tains her spiritual specific in the sea of marriage,"
said Ward. "That is poise self-satisfaction peace,
I suppose."
"Married women are so self-satisfied," said Helene,
beginning on a note of spite, but plunging immediately
to her own problem. "Sometimes I think I'll get mar-
ried. It's the natural thing for a woman, after all."
This flimsy pretense part of the general fantasy
of her host of lovers with which she was always satis-
fying her imaginary conception of herself, aroused
a pitying fear in Ward. Her first doubt of the love
legend had been roused this legend which had ruined
Helene. Would Helene's prince come along? Ward
wondered. And with the wonder came the fear that
she was becoming futile. Uselessness was wasting
her. Was she doomed, like Helene, to pettiness after
all?
13J
132 THE LOVE LEGEND
On account of her seniority in years Helene pa-
tronized both Nita and Ward, in telling of the hearts
she had broken. She pretended that at their age she
had been swamped with masculine attention, but
anxiety for her future, shook her whole being with a
burning eagerness, masked by a stiff-lipped pride
when the breath of a man's attention blew past her.
Listening to Helene's rhapsodies on Bill Wicker; to
her limitless conjectures and conclusions always flat-
tering to herself, Ward experienced sharp sensations
of gloom, melancholy, apprehension. Was her affair
with Rod, then, nothing but imagination? Was it
based on smoky visions that would be dispelled by
the clear wind of time? Had Rod been trifling with
her, as she knew Wicker had been trifling with Helene?
Sometimes, half convinced by Helene's colored stories,
that Wicker was the hero Helene thought him, she
would reassure Helene that Wicker was earnestly
longing for her, only kept off by Mrs. Partridge's
heavy guard.
It was now over a month since Rod had gone.
Ward's inner life had become an absorption in him.
Every trifling event of the day reminded her of some
phase of their friendship. The telephone's ring meant
a wild hope that it might be he. Every mail delivery
encouraged her for a minute with the thought of a
possible letter.
Helene's confidence subtly took away from the dig-
nity of her affair with Rod. Was she destined to go
on year in and year out in this poignant atmosphere
of stale virginity, feeling the pain, the pathos of the
unwanted, until she became dull, apathetic? No, she
hugged her pain to her breast. Her very sufferings
linked her to youth and hope. Aesthetic sufferings,
they were, to be dispelled by the interest of a new play
THE LOVE LEGEND 133
or by an invitation to dinner from a new man. It was
only when she saw her feelings reflected in Helene,
heard the excuses she made for Rod, in Helene's
mouth, pardoning Wicker, that a fierce, hot feeling, al-
most of revolt, arose in her.
Behind the falling curtain of the rain, Helene and
she were phantoms on the street, two timid fugitives
shut in the mist of rainy silver, frustrate, longing, both.
II
As the days hurried on toward Christmas, Nita, in
New York, was very busy. She already had a circle of
girls about her as she had in Lakeshore, and at the
University. Admiring, inferior girls whom she pa-
tronized. These girls were different from Helene and
Mary, in that they had real love affairs to confide.
Many of them were what Nita called "messy," by
which she meant that they came as near to being illicit
as they could without being actually so. Nita was
apt to generalize all sex as messy.
Howard wrote often. His letters only hinted that
he was in love with her.
At Christmas time he sent her a small diamond
ring, which she promptly sent back. After that she
was unhappy for some time, but she had been unable
to see any other solution. He had never proposed.
He had never told her that he loved her. Therefore
she could not accept jewelry from him. Besides she
would never care to show the girls such an inexpensive
ring. For a while it looked as if the affair was off
forever. Then Howard came forward nobly with a
declaration. She replied, "I do love you, Howard,"
but not impulsively, as Sari had done by telegraph.
134 THE LOVE LEGEND
She wrote and re-wrote the letter and then sent it on
handsome stationery on its trip across the continent.
She wrote home that she was engaged, and there
was much rejoicing in the breasts of her mother and
her sister Ward.
CHAPTER V
CECIL drooped more and more as the days went on
and he did not hear from his parents. Sari, pleasantly
indifferent to the feelings of her family, could not un-
derstand his sadness; she hoped with an unselfishness
novel to her nature that his mother, at least, would
soon relent.
Sometimes Cecil was sentimental over his mother,
and told Sari how well she had understood him, and
how she had always taken his part against his father
who was a gruff old boy, but kind at heart. He called
them the pater and the mater.
So when a letter post-marked St. Louis came for
Cecil during the first week in December, her eager joy
bubbled as she handed it to him.
"Dear Cecil and Sari:
"Will you please come and visit us for New Years.
Always we have the whole family to come and eat
with us New Years. You can ask Cecil.
"Papa wants you should both come home. If you
have not money we will send. Come as soon as you
can. Come before New Years if you can.
"The boys are crazy to see you. Aunt Becky wants
you should stay with her a few days. Write soon and
let us know when you could come. Much love,
"MRS. DE JONGHE."
Evidently written by a person unaccustomed to the
135
136 THE LOVE LEGEND
use of the pen the signature looked as if it had been
accomplished with a sigh of relief.
Happiness diffused itself through Cecil. It was as
if a button of release had been placed on his soul al-
lowing its natural joyousness to bubble forth.
"The gang all gathers round on New Year's eve," he
explained nonchalantly. His aggressively picturesque
Americanism struck Sari afresh after reading the letter
which had been something of a shock to her. Were
Cecil's people then really that Jewy kind of Jews that
one read about? She knew that they were not ortho-
dox, and she had not imagined that idiom would be
part of their language any more than it was part of
Cecil's. Did his mother and father speak with an ac-
cent, then!
Cecil's clan celebrated neither Christmas nor the
Jewish holidays. But on the last night of December
they had a custom of gathering together, forty or
fifty of them for merry-making cooking turkeys with
prodigious stuffings, and exercising the subtle arts
of the Jewish cuisine. Cecil quickened with pleasure
as he described it to Sari.
They decided to spend Christmas in Lakeshore as
Dizzy was coming home for the holidays. Then they
would go to St. Louis, on the last day of the old year
Cecil's day for drawing his salary.
II
"Ooh Cecil! What for you want to go and do
that?" Tearfully, with a gesture half bantering, half
deprecating, wholly loving, Mrs. De Jonghe welcomed
her boy at the railroad station in St. Louis. For Sari,
she had the sentence, "So little so young. What does
mamma think?"
THE LOVE LEGEND 137
Sari rightly interpreting this as an enquiry into her
mother's feelings on the subject of her marriage, mut-
tered that her mother thought she was young, too.
Her freedom of movement deserted her for the first
time in her life. A gesture would have been adventure.
A step required courage.
"Poor papa is here with the machine. Dear papa
how he feels." She sighed and led the way to the
street talking all the time to Cecil. How thin he
looked chicken for dinner Sari was thin, too
They would fatten her up lots of nice milk would do
it did she drink malted milk every night before bed
she should eat it these restaurants
Poor papa turned out to be a fierce looking indi-
vidual who sat behind the wheel, glowered and tended
strictly to his own business. His eyebrows bristled,
his black eyes darted out at Sari who shrank back
thinking, quite erroneously, that he had conceived a
violent distaste for her. He ejected one sentence of
surly welcome to Cecil and then glared ferociously to
conceal his emotion. This combined with the counte-
nance that nature had given him made him appear a
formidable person, which he was not, being completely
under the thumb of mamma, who ruled the household.
"You should tuck in her feet, Cecil. Cold, do you
want her to get? Ach, how little! How thin! The
boys how they will love her. Roger will be jealous
huh Cecil?" She exchanged glances with Cecil, nod-
ding, congratulating him over Sari's head. "Isn't she
wonderful?" Cecil's eyes asked mutely. And his
mother answered aloud out of her love for him, "Beau-
tiful. So stylish! I guess she's clever, too? I don't
know?"
"Oh, is she?" Cecil beamed, almost beside himself
138 THE LOVE LEGEND
with joy at his mother's renewed friendship. He bent
ostentatiously over Sari. "Cold, dear?"
"Quite warm," murmured Sari, still overcome by the
feeling of strangeness. The vividness of Mrs. De
Jonghe's personality blighted her own. For the first
time in her life she failed to be fully herself. This
feeling was to intensify as the visit progressed and
she met more members of Cecil's race.
A Jew among gentiles is always a vivid person. He
stands out in heavy outlines. He has a tang; a blare;
an exotic brilliancy that may repel or attract. But
the Aryan among Jews ! Against a solid Hebraic back-
ground his pale pigments merge into the shadows.
Color deserts him. Foreign he may look in a mean
negligible way. But he is faint, hollow cheeked,
dulled. The eye passes him, bounding on to the next
Jew.
Ill
Cecil's small brother Bertram, a child of five, ran
to Sari as soon as he saw her, and refused to be drawn
away. She seemed to have the same magnetism for
him that she had for Cecil. Bertram resented Cecil's
nightly usurpation of her, and climbed on her bed as
soon as he awoke in the morning.
In the house next door lived Cecil's cousins, all with
good old English names. There was Roger, twenty,
virile, on the edge of becoming representatively racial.
Francis, twelve, dreamy, much like Cecil in tempera-
ment, and Cynthia, twenty-eight, blatantly, deter-
minedly like a flapper of fiction.
Cynthia and Roger came to dinner that first night.
"New spoons, Aunt Ray," exclaimed Cynthia as
THE LOVE LEGEND 139
they sat down to the soup. "Swell?" On the table
small, shiny, round-bowled spoons lay contemptuously
beside the other dull, worn table ware.
"You like them, Cyn?" asked Cecil's mother anx-
iously. "What you think, Sari? Such a funny shape.
It don't go in the mouth right. What you think?"
"Aw say, Aunt Ray, you're not supposed to swallow
them," said Cynthia. "You should sip your soup from
the side. See? Like this."
"I should sip from the side? That's the style?"
"You should be foolish, Ray," said Cecil's father.
"Get me the old spoon, the big size."
"Look, Sari drinks from the side like a cup,"
shouted little Bertram.
"Ach, her appetite like a bird's it is!" said Mrs. De
Jonghe looking at Sari pityingly. "Why don't you eat
something?" She filled her daughter-in-law's plate
until it ran over on the cloth. "Some salad you must
have, too. Cecil, every night before bed, hot malted
milk you should give her!"
IV
As the guests began to arrive for the New Year's
party Sari began to feel more and more lost. Roger
brought a little blonde girl on his arm who looked pale
and scared. The color had retreated from even her
lips under the strain of combating his lusty swagger-
ing personality. She was the only gentile besides Sari
at the party. Her name was Janet.
Cecil's Aunt Becky, with a rich bosom swelling out
under her dimpled chin, led in Uncle Pete, slim, suave
and adoringly proud of Aunt Becky; Rosie Shune-
mann, her red hair streaked with gray, aggressively
140 THE LOVE LEGEND
the unhappy virgin came with them. Early in the
evening, a curly haired pretty young girl told her for-
tune and promised her seven husbands. This Rosie
pathetically repeated from time to time during the
evening.
About eleven thirty the Jews began coming so thick
and fast that they seemed to Sari to pile up, melt
and disappear, like snow-flakes at the beginning of a
storm. Faster, and faster, thicker and thicker, more
and more, until there was such a crowd of strange
Jewish faces, indistinguishable one from the other, yet
all different, that Sari found herself low-spiritedly
wishing for someone to come and dig her out. What a
variety of types there were. How very different one
Jew could be from another and still be markedly
Jewish-looking. This was a great discovery to Sari,
who had always accepted the theory that all Jews were
alike hook-nosed, black eyed, and curly headed. Here
were blue-eyed, straight-haired, red-headed, Grecian-
nosed Jews. Only one or two, here and there, bore
all the marks accredited to the traditional Hebrew.
"Do you feel yourself anywhere about?" asked the
pale blond girl Janet, in a whisper.
Sari stared. Then she understood.
"I must be here," she said. "But I really can't say
that I feel aggressively in the landscape."
"I know I'm not here," said the pale blonde. fc l
just can't get hold of myself. You look like a poor
little drowning kitten."
Cecil was the handsomest person in the family.
From his grandmother to his little third cousin David
it was evident that he was admitted to hold the family
honors for beauty of form and figure.
"You ought to see Cecil in a bathing suit, he's sim-
ply great, Janet," called Cynthia. She was seated on
THE LOVE LEGEND 141
Roger's knee, drinking wine. She had just finished
proclaiming in a loud voice that they could carry her
out, she meant to get drunk, when her attention had
been called to Cecil standing near Sari. "He's sim-
ply stunning looking in a bathing suit, Janet. That
boy's figure!"
"Janet likes me in a bathing suit," said Roger, who
was responsible for Janet's presence at the party.
"Oh no, you're too hairy, Rog," said Cynthia. She
wore evening dress and an enormous bouquet of or-
chids. The young man to whom she was engaged sat
pale, and strained looking on a nearby sofa, and never
removed his eyes from her face.
Janet and Sari were the center of the young people,
who lead by Cynthia, and Roger, were anxious to show
the older folks that they were very free, modern and
American. The younger women all smoked and talked
with a turn of the shoulders, a lift of the eyebrow, a
hint of an English accent.
"Oh the crowd's celebrating," said Cynthia. "You
should see them. They began this afternoon down at
the Random."
"Already?" asked Mrs. De Jonghe.
"Yes. Janet and I were out there for tea. And
three men waiting for an elevator came up dead drunk.
One of them grabbed me for a kiss."
"Swell men?"
"Didn't any of them grab Janet?" asked Roger
jealously.
"No, their elevator came along just then "
"Well, can you imagine that," demanded Roger in-
dignantly. "I guess they couldn't have seen Janet,
then."
At midnight a gorgeous feast was served. Roast
turkeys were brought, deliciously browned, from the
142 THE LOVE LEGEND
kitchens. Such salads! Such vegetables! Such
cakes! Wines and liqueurs! A mixture of the most
modern American dishes and foods prepared as their
ancestors prepared them five hundred years ago.
The party hilariously took their places at the table.
The older men talking gravely, religion, philosophy
and politics, mostly politics. Sari caught bits of con-
versation that made her think of her own childhood
when her father had gathered the radicals and social-
ists of his acquaintance around the Harris dinner
table. And there was a fat, good-natured looking man
who upheld the capitalist system humorously, in the
face of a small, wiry, earnest, shabbily dressed person
who pounded his fists on the table and shouted some-
thing about the working classes.
The older women whispered together and nodded,
and discussed Sari. Mrs. De Jonghe exhibited her
proudly, and with such a roguish look in her bright
eyes, peeping out of her round kitten face, as to make
Sari quite happy to be with her. And little Ber-
tram, who had been allowed to come to the party,
clung to her hand until he fell asleep on one of the
divans, when he was carried off to bed by Cecil.
The younger people, who were much in the minority
tried to carry the party with a high hand; to liven it
up a bit. Thus Roger arose and told a story, and
announced that everyone who didn't tell a story would
be obliged to pay a forfeit. Janet being called on
next, refused, whereupon Roger collected the forfeit,
a long, fervent kiss.
The party broke up about four o'clock, and at five
after the last guests had dribbled home, the De
Jonghe family seated themselves comfortably in the
kitchen for a final cup of coffee. After which they
all trailed sleepily off to bed.
THE LOVE LEGEND 143
When the lights were turned out and they lay side
by side Sari said: "I guess we can't laugh it off,
Cecil."
A long breath came from Cecil. He turned his head
restlessly on the pillow. "What makes you think so,
dear?"
"I've been looking in books, and things, and I found
out that sickness like I've been having is one of the
symptoms."
"Gee, Sari, it's going to make it bad."
"Yes," she agreed. "Say Cecil, are you sorry?"
"Sorry?"
"You know, sorry we got married and everything
like that."
"How could I be sorry, dear. You see, I love you."
"Cecil, you're sweet. Do you really? In spite
of"
He pulled her to him and spoke against her lips.
"Now, more than ever."
Sari drew away from him and said with greater ear-
nestness than she had ever felt in her life before:
"Cecil I want to tell you something. I love you, too.
I didn't when we were married. I just thought that
marriage was going to be a lark a date every night.
And I wasn't at all sure that I'd stay married. I
didn't understand about it "
"Do you think you will now?"
"Understand?"
"No, stay married?"
"Yes, yes, I think so. There's a cock-eyed yarn
that mother filled us full of when we were children all
about a prince that was going to come and oh well,
144 THE LOVE LEGEND
you know. Of course, I saw that was simply cheese,
and I thought it didn't matter what you did Now, I
sort of get it. I don't mean that I believe in it, but
I understand how you could get to feel that way about
a man if you were the sort of person who dressed life
up in its Sunday clothes "
"Dear, it's almost morning."
"Oh, well, then, goodnight, you cock-eyed old thing,
if you don't want to hear what I'm talking about "
"I do, Darling, I'm awfully interested, only it is
late!"
"I said goodnight, didn't I?"
His kiss was like a round fat period at the end of a
sentence.
"Goodnight."
"Goodnight."
CHAPTER VI
I
MR. AND MRS. CECIL HOWE DE JONGHE (Sari had
insisted on the H. standing for something) came back
to their home on Oak street much refreshed in spirits
from their winter holiday. Sari breathed a sigh of
thankfulness that Cecil's people lived in St. Louis, and
Cecil himself settled down contentedly on the train
at leaving them, happy that everything was all right
at home so he could forget about it.
But an hour after he had parted from Sari on his
first night at the theater, he returned, dejected and
with the news that some one else had been hired dur-
ing his absence, and that the manager refused to dis-
charge the interloper.
It was a cold, miserable night, and they looked dis-
piritedly through the papers, but no one was in need
of a moving picture pianist. But for the weather
Cecil would have gone out and solicited the managers
of neighborhood theaters to try him, but he was suf-
fering with an incipient cold, and Sari refused to let
him go.
The next day he began a heart-breaking search for
a job. Nearly all the theaters wanted a pipe-organist
as well as a pianist, and Cecil's natural talents on the
pipe organ would not pass with any of the managers
who tried him.
A week went by in which Cecil desperately answered
every advertisement he could imagine himself filling in
145
146 THE LOVE LEGEND
any capacity. Their money was nearly gone when he
got a short job working as a clerk in a January sale of
white goods. He made forty-five dollars in ten days'
work with his commissions, and came in every night
looking paler, thinner, more tired and with his big eyes
staring at Sari with the poetic pathos of countenance in
which some Jews seem to typify the persecutions of
their race.
Forty-five dollars relieved them for the time, but
their rent would be due in a week and it was sixty-
five dollars.
"Cecil, dear, don't worry about that. It's sure to
come out all right."
Cecil, his head in his hands, turned restlessly.
"I shouldn't worry, and you going to be a mother?"
He rose, and moved about the room restlessly. "We've
got to make the best of things, I suppose. Of course
I can ask my dad for money, but "
"Oh surely Cecil, tomorrow you'll get something "
Cecil broke down. "Oh baby, I'm no good. No
good. Our plans everything smashed." He threw
himself on his knees and buried his head in Sari's lap.
"Oh Cecil, tomorrow, you're bound to get something,
bound to, dear, I know you will."
II
The next day Cecil did get something. A small
moving picture theater, barely managing to exist on
the southwest side in the suburbs offered him twenty
dollars a week. The journey back and forth would be
three hours each way, but as he made it homeward,
there was a faint gleam of happiness in his heart, even
THE LOVE LEGEND 147
though one of the thick Chicago blizzards delayed
him an hour.
It was nearly midnight when he came in. Sari sat
up in bed and hugged him.
"You're so warm," murmured Cecil, "So nice and
warm. Gee, it's cold out. Well, dear, I got a job."
"Cecil darling, where?"
"Way out south you know that second { ad.' Well,
an old Dutchman offered me a job. I played for him
and he thought I was swell. Course he's no judge of
music, but "
"How much?"
Cecil hesitated. If only there had been some way
to augment his income he would have increased it in
telling her. But he had to confess "Twenty dollars."
Sari was silent, wondering how they would live on
that.
"Maybe, honey, I can get some work to do in the
daytime. Some shoe clerk job, or something "
"But Cecil, when would you sleep. You won't get
home before midnight, will you?"
"Midnight? Gee, I wish I would get home at mid-
night. Do you know it takes three hours to get out
there. I'll have to leave here at four, to make it by
seven, and the place closes up at eleven-thirty, so I'll
get home at exactly two-thirty in the morning."
"Oh Cecil, we'll have to move south, won't we?
You can't be making such a long trip."
"Rents are cheaper on the south side. Gosh, I
won't get paid for a week, and then the rent will be
due here. I wonder if Mr. Tweety will wait a week
for the rent."
"Cecil."
"Yes, honey!"
148 THE LOVE LEGEND
"I've been thinking Cecil that it wouldn't be a bad
idea if we went well "
"Yes?"
"Well, if we went home and stayed with mother,
until, well, until after it came?"
Cecil was thoughtful.
"Do you want to?"
"Well, it would certainly be more comfortable for
both of us. And as long as I can't work, I might as
well be at home we wouldn't have any rent to pay,
and you could save up your money for doctor bills and
things like that. Babies are awfully expensive, I've
heard."
"We'd have to pay board," said Cecil. "It wouldn't
be right."
"Mother wouldn't take it from us. Cecil, we've got
to go some place. We can't stay here and pay this
rent. Why sixty-five dollars from eighty dollars leaves
only fifteen dollars a month for us to eat on. We
can't save any money out of that."
"No?" said Cecil, still with doubt in his voice.
"Of course, I'll look rather foolish going home after
I've been so high-handed and everything. But it's
really the only sensible thing to do, until after the
child arrives! Then I can get a job and we can both
be freeer."
"It really is the best course to take, I guess," said
Cecil, who thought only of Sari's welfare. "It would
be best for you to have your mother at a time like
that anyway."
"Yes, and then it won't take over three quarters of
an hour from our house on the south side."
"I don't think it will even take that long."
THE LOVE LEGEND 149
in
Luck was with the young De Jonghes in this new
venture. Before Sari was up the next morning, and
while Cecil was out buying food for breakfast, she
was called to the telephone by the musical voiced
Twee tie.
"Aow, Messes Di Jung, yow're wunted at the tale
phone!"
It was Mrs. Harris, suggesting that Sari meet Ward
and her for luncheon downtown.
"I don't feel well," said Sari, "and it's a horribly
Cold day. Couldn't you and Ward come out here to
lunch? You know you can take a taxi and get here
in five minutes, and I'll have luncheon all ready for
you."
Mrs. Harris demurred at first, but Sari was
insistent saying that she particularly wanted to see
her mother. Mrs. Harris promised to be there at
one with Ward.
After she hung up the receiver Sari remembered
with dismay that a company luncheon costs money.
She could have asked them to come in the afternoon,
she supposed, but Cecil reassured her, saying that it
couldn't be helped now, and that it was a chance for
her to offer to go home.
"I won't need to offer," said Sari, suddenly sob-
bing. "I'll be invited as soon as mother finds out."
Cecil soothed her patiently, and tucked her back in
bed, saying that he would go out again and do the
marketing and get everything ready for the luncheon.
He prepared a breakfast and brought it in to her,
watching her eat anxiously.
The luncheon passed off smoothly. Sari was chatty
ISO THE LOVE LEGEND
about their trip to St. Louis, Cecil silent. Mrs. Harris
watched Sari's strained eyes closely, but it was not
until Sari rose suddenly from the table, and bent over
the sink, that her mother knew positively why Sari
had been ill in the morning.
Later, when Sari was lying on the lounge the offer
came that they had decided to accept.
"We will get a taxi and you must come right home
with us, now," said Mrs. Harris. "I won't feel right
until I know you are safely at home with me."
"Oh, I can't go until tomorrow, anyway, and I
shouldn't until the end of the week," protested Sari.
"You'll come now," said her mother firmly.
"Oh, mother, tomorrow. We have so much pack-
ing"
"Ward can do it."
"But I'm perfectly well. It was just a little fit of
sickness."
"Yes, but you are liable to have more little fits of
sickness from now on. To what doctor have you
been?"
"I haven't been to any. Today is practically the
first time I've been ill."
"But, but " Mrs. Harris had thought she was be-
yond being surprised by this daughter, but this out-
raged her. "Why don't you know you should be
under a doctor's care! I shall call in Dr. Smart as
soon as I get you home, tonight."
"Oh, mother, please, please. I'll come the first
thing hi the morning. I really can't make that long
trip today. I can't stand the cold and the trains and
the walk through the snow from the station "
"We'll get a taxi and drive out."
"I'd rather go tomorrow."
THE LOVE LEGEND 151
"Will you come the first thing, and let Cecil bring
you in a taxi?"
"I won't need a taxi, mother. I'll be all right to-
morrow. Listen, I know what we can do. Mr.
Bixby's mother has a little room at the end of the hall,
and as she's out of town Ward can stay there all night,
and bring me in the morning!"
"Yes," said Ward, "and then if the slightest thing
happens I can call a doctor."
"Cecil takes care of me all right," said Sari, pout-
ing. Cecil smiled at her, eagerly watching her face as
he had become accustomed to doing lately.
She could not bear to pass a night away from Cecil.
IV
The next day they arrived at Lakeshore at about
two o'clock. Sari went to her old room and began
changing her clothes. She was interrupted by a timid
knocking on the door.
"Come in," she called. Olive hesitated at the door.
"Glad to see you," said Olive, delightedly. "Real
pleased to see you back."
"How are you, Olive," said Sari, carelessly.
"Real well, thank you. It's right lonesome around
here with all you girls gone. Miss Nita she's gone off
to college, and Miss Dizzy, she's married no, no,
Miss Dizzy, she's gone off to college, that's right."
"Miss Nita is in New York," said Sari.
"Let me see," Olive cogitated. "Yes, that's right.
I get you girls all mixed up, sometimes, they's so
many of you. Well, I guess I'll have to be gettin' on
with my work." She sighed and moved to the door.
"Well, I'm glad you're back."
"Thank you," said Sari, taking up a finger nail file.
152 THE LOVE LEGEND
Olive closed the door, then opened it again and slyly
peeped in, grinning across her face. "Misses Sari,
mind you have a boy!" She shook her finger play-
fully, then apparently considered that if this was not
Sari's plan she might be giving offense, and added,
"Or a girl, I don't care which!" and closed the door.
CHAPTER VII
"THE unfortunate thing about my position at pres-
ent," said Sari, who was sitting in her room, sewing
and talking to Ward, "is that I have become the tar-
get for the sympathetic friends of mother. They come
and relate their experiences to me with the excuse that
it helps me. As heroic and symbolic woman about to
present the nation with a son all the old hens of Lake-
shore who have prophesied that I would end on the
streets "
"Sari!"
" have become my friends, and have seized the
opportunity of telling me exactly how they felt at
every moment during the nine months of their experi-
ence. I've never said one word to encourage them.
Evidently they think I have the most morbid curiosity
about all phases of the birth question. That crazy
Mrs. de Remy nearly talked me nutty, and finally just
to get rid of her and not to seem ungracious I said,
'Oh won't you give me treatments Mrs. de Remy.'
She had been hinting that she would like to, you know.
And I thought, bless her heart they can't hurt me, let
her. Guess what she said, 'All right dear, only won't
you try and love more!' Love more? I want to know
what she meant, love more."
Sari's surface was changing. Revolt had given
place to tolerant amusement in her expression. Her
inherent simplicity of character, her talent for indi-
vidual thinking asserted itself as she dropped her old
153
154 THE LOVE LEGEND
characterizations, and became definitely herself. It
was not that child-bearing had sobered her, but she
had resigned herself to months of quiet waiting. She
began to read everything she could find about the
development of the foetus, birth, the young child.
She sat with Ward for long hours sewing. A kin-
ship grew out of these silent times that had never
before existed between them. Sari began to take
Nita's place, imperceptibly in Ward's heart. A spirit-
ual friendship grew up between them almost before
either realized it.
Ward talked of Rod to Sari very often. She hardly
tried to conceal from Sari that he was constantly on
her mind. At first Sari urged Ward to telegraph Rod
to come at once, then to write. Why should Ward
think of him all the time, and yet do nothing to bring
him to her side? Ward even told Sari her fears that
perhaps she, too, was becoming like Mary and Helene,
seeking consolation in an imaginary affair. When Sari
seemed to be turning this version of the question over
in her mind, Ward suddenly said, coloring, "Rod did
love me. If he didn't then no man ever loved a woman."
Sari was not moved. She still sat thinking. "Ward,
do you know there's something I've been thinking
about for a long time? I've been turning it over in
my mind."
"About me?"
"Yes. It's hard to explain why I feel this. But it
seems true to me. And it is that marriage would
never do for you. It isn't the solution of life for you."
"But why?"
"I don't know." Sari was on the point of disappear-
ing into a vague manner which she used to close argu-
ments. "It's all right for Nita or even for Dizzy, but
THE LOVE LEGEND 155
I can't imagine you married. You wouldn't like it,
somehow; I can't explain."
"But I have to get married. I feel that I will. You
frighten me sort of. I wish you'd say what you mean.
I'm rather worried."
"It isn't for you!"
"It all depends on the sort of man you marry."
Ward's manner seemed to drop distilled wisdom.
"He has to be unselfish, broad, tolerant, and self-con-
trolled, in addition to being clean and honorable and
strong."
"You swallow so much of mother's bunk," said
Sari. "The real hard knocks simply can't come to you.
You're engaged to a man, and because he goes off and
leaves you in a huff about something, you just gently
pine away upon the stem. You'd just die if you had
to go through some of the ordinary things I've gone
through without thinking about them. I rather like
experiences and hard knocks. I mean, I don't regret
anything. I guess I'm vulgar. I'm selfish, too."
Ward flushed. "I don't pretend to be unselfish."
"No, but you try to be. You have the ideal of
being unselfish. And it handicaps you, darling. It
diffuses your energy somehow."
Ward, uncomprehending returned to the subject
"I don't know. I want to be married. But I am
worried about different things like the sins of the
fathers and birth control."
"Yes, I know. Unpleasant truths worry you and
confuse you. It's right for you to have lots of men
worshipping you "
"Boys!"
"You never give them anything except a vague sweet
breath of unreality, a feeling that life is beautiful and
romantic and "
156 THE LOVE LEGEND
"That's something, then, isn't it?"
"Yes, it's a lot, of course, but it unfits you for prac-
tical life. How can you, for instance, get on a train
and go east and find Rod, and ask him whether he
loves you or not? At first I thought that was the only
decent thing to do when you first told me. It's what
I'd do. But now, I see that you can't, and I see why
you can't. It's more fitting somehow, that you should
poetically pine."
"Would you really do that, Sari?"
"Go after him? Of course I would. If I loved him.
I'd go after Cecil, I know that. But maybe I wouldn't
if we'd never been married. I didn't love him then
like I do now. It was all fun, and I thought if I
didn't like him I could easily divorce him "
II
In June Dizzy returned from Wharton. Her hair
was twisted up on her head, and she no longer looked
like a little girl. No one thought of her as being only
seventeen except her mother. When she put on
grown up clothes Dizzy grew up. There was never
any patronizing of her she had no such struggle to
assert herself and establish a place for herself in the
adult world as Sari had.
She was making preparations to enter summer
school at the University of Chicago as a sophomore.
She had not only made all her freshman credits at
Wharton, but she had made them with good grades.
She would enter the University of Chicago in the fall
a year and a quarter ahead of her class, and by attend-
ing summer school each summer would graduate from
college in two more years.
THE LOVE LEGEND 157
III
Mrs. Harris found a poem by Edgar Guest in a
magazine: "It means a lot to be a dad." She clipped
it out and took it to Sari, who could use it, she
thought, in awakening Cecil to the new joy that was
coming to him.
"I'll give it to him," said Sari politely. She looked
at Dizzy and they laughed, to the astonishment of
Mrs. Harris, who said:
"When I was a little girl and used to play wedding
with my dolls I always played that the next day my
wedded couple had a baby. That was the proper cli-
max in my mind. To wait for it had no part in my
plan of the ideal. And somehow, even yet, notwith-
standing all I've learned of the blessedness of antici-
pation, I find that young brides have to wait too long
for that disordering, encumbering, transfiguring first
baby!"
Sari rushed from the room. It was the first time
she had shown any of her natural fire.
Mrs. Harris raised an eyebrow to indicate to Ward
and Dizzy that this was merely one of the phases to
months that follow, it is a wonder that many of the
be expected in Sari's condition. She continued plac-
idly. "What with the honeymoon, and the long
dear young things weather it through until the baby
comes to take their minds off themselves and give them
an absorbing interest."
"Mother," said Dizzy bluntly, "you ought to have
more sense than that. This idea of having babies
right and left is sheer nonsense. There is no poetry
about it. Do you know that there are more hungry
people today than ever before, despite the fact that
158 THE LOVE LEGEND
for years the workers of the United States have pro-
duced vastly more food than was necessary to feed
the populace. If we can't feed all the people we now
have in this country what is the sense in going on
breeding more all the time. The economic struggle
is growing more intense all the time. Overproduction
of babies is what the capitalists want "
"Things like that will hardly affect your sister any-
way," said Mrs. Harris.
"They'll affect her a darn sight more than the sweet
poetic thoughts you've been springing on her will."
In Sari and Dizzy opinions amounted to convic-
tions, but at the same time, they assumed that they
were living examples of the figure so wise that he
knows that he knows nothing. This humility, so hol-
low that it rang with egotism like the pigskin of a
drum thumped with a stick, was polished with a touch
of satirical aloofness to things about which they were
not at all indifferent. The contemptuous assurance
that their ideas were reproachless because they re-
flected the intellectual mode had drawn them into
sisterhood.
IV
Sari and Cecil managed to "weather it through"
without the disordering, encumbering, transfiguring
baby for a few more weeks, in spite of the really
serious fact that the theater where Cecil worked closed
its doors and he lost his job. Lakeshore was not as
much concerned over this as it might have been if
Cecil had been Irish, Chinese, or an Arab. They all
knew that Jews have mysterious ways of hauling huge
fortunes out of ash cans, and no one felt that Sari
really would suffer. In commiserating with each other
THE LOVE LEGEND 159
over Sari's ill luck in marriage, they always ended by
saying, "Well, at any rate, she'll always be well taken
care of. Jews certainly know how to get the money."
Cecil showed no signs of this famous Jewish talent.
He took a hard, long houred temporary job, clerking.
He played for stray dances, accepting small wages as
he was not a member of the Musicians' Union; and his
soul suffered over accepting money for his wife from
Mrs. Harris. Though no one but Sari guessed this.
Mrs. Partridge prophesied that he would get all Mrs.
Harris' money away from her, as Jews were so shrewd
they could take your money away almost without
your knowing it.
After two heart-breaking weeks he finally found a
place playing the piano in a ten cent store. The
wages were slightly better, the hours allowed him to
spend his evenings with his wife, and so the last week
before the baby came was a happier one for both.
On July 7, Tyndall Harris De Jonghe was born.
CHAPTER VIII
In October Dizzy was introduced to the social life
of the University of Chicago. A few weeks, before she
was to enter the second quarter of her sophomore
year she received a letter from a member of the
college woman's club to which Anita and Ward
belonged.
Chicago, Illinois.
September Three.
"My Dear Miss Harris:
"Knowing Nita and Ward so well, I almost said my
dear Elizabeth, but decided that you might think me
too forward. However, I hope we will soon be friends.
The dear old U. has so willed it that I am to be your
upper class counselor. That sounds formidable but it
is not, really. It is rather difficult for a newcomer to
find his, or her, way about the campus, to know where
to go and what to do, as well as what not to do. An
upper class counselor's duty is to make things easier
for freshmen, to make them feel at home, and learn
to love the old U. just as ardently as anyone. I am
to escort you to Mandel Hall on Registration Day and
to do anything I can for you. It would probably be
just as well were we to meet before October 1 to get
acquainted.
"I should be glad to call on you or to have you call
on me if you would prefer. Just drop me a line. I
suppose you are as curious about me as I am about
160
THE LOVE LEGEND 161
you. I'll tell you what I look like so your mind will
be at ease. I look more like a giraffe than anything,
owing to my long, long neck. I have the most beauti-
fully curly teeth that you ever saw, but alas! the only
curl to my hair is produced by the aid of a curling
iron. By the way, my hair is rather mud colorish and
my eyes match. I'm middling tall and somewhat
'skinnay' albeit I've gained six pounds this summer.
My chief warrant for distinction is my great fondness
for giggling and chocolates, as Ward will tell you.
Now you see what is to have charge of poor little you
until you can care for yourself.
Very sincerely yours,
Helen Marion Barker."
"I must submit to this, I suppose," thought Dizzy
to herself, indignantly. "I'm sure I don't know what
she can do for me but I'll be civil to her for a day
or so.
The author of the letter was half an hour late, and
Dizzy had nearly given her up when she appeared
breathless and letting out a stream of conversation:
"My dear, I'm sorry to be late. I'm always late.
Let me see who your Dean is? Oh, Dean Wallace.
She is a tall, stately lady, with the nicest eyes and the
dearest voice. You'll just love her. Very much the
correct thing, my dear. A perfect picture, too. Sort
of first lady of the landscape. We've got to go and
register. Come on, you've got to get a slip."
She pulled the outraged Dizzy across the campus,
nodding to the football heroes, basketball champions,
prom leaders and other famous personages, between
her spurts of conversation.
"I was lucky to get you, my dear. I drew some
impossible creature's name, but the girl just ahead of
162 THE LOVE LEGEND
me had your name and I persuaded her to cnange
slips with me, so I could be your upper class coun-
selor, knowing Ward and Nita so well. I was awfully
glad to get you for my Freshman."
"I'm not a Freshman," said Dizzy.
"Oh, yes, my dear, I know all about it. You're a
perfect wiz. Oh, you'll like it here. It's simply in-
spiring. Be sure and get Teddy Lynn in English if
you possibly can. My dear, he's a perfect wiz. I
didn't get him for English I. I got a horrid creature
named Mr. Chuz, a grade student. Look out for
them. They shove them off on the junior college
whenever they can."
II
It was not long before Dizzy extricated herself
from the social life at the University. When the mem-
bers of the club to which Nita and Ward belonged
asked her to join, she declined, to the astonishment of
the members who were accustomed to look upon their
organization as the epitome of the desires of the under-
graduate woman. Ward protested and begged her to
accept. Enjoying the amazement of everyone, she
refused.
"It's really because I haven't the time to waste on
those extremely rattle-brained girls. I'm not inter-
ested in playing the social game. It might be interest-
ing if it were different from any other snobbish society,
but I can see the same self-imposed burden of aristoc-
racy anywhere. I don't care to weigh myself down
with the idea that I have a position to maintain as a
member of the best club on the campus."
"But it looks like a criticism of us, not to take it."
"Why? It might, if I intended to take some other
THE LOVE LEGEND 165
club. But I don't. Besides there are plenty of girls
at the University who are just as desirable and more
so than I, who are, for some silly reason not asked to
join a club. I simply throw in whatever weight I have
on the side of the girls who can't get in. Any girl who
turns a club down raises by a degree the social stand-
ing of the girls who can't get in, don't you think?"
Ward did not think so. She felt humiliated, and as
if her friends on the campus had been slapped in the
face. Girls whose whole ideal was democracy, and
who wanted nothing more than to raise the standards
of the school, to be branded as snobs! It was too bad
of Dizzy. Not that the girls would care, she told
Dizzy, but it was a disgrace to the Harris family.
Nita writing from New York, thought so, too.
But Dizzy did not join a club.
Ill
Dizzy's intellectual brilliancy in the classroom at-
tracted one or two inferior masculine intellects. They
invited Dizzy out, and argued with her and admired
her. The attractive fraternity men of the class who
had been Ward's swains let her alone, after her deci-
sion not to take a club was made public. She had not
enough attraction for them to make them seek her out.
Besides she knew very few of them outside her class-
room.
Dizzy had grown into a reasonably pretty girl. Her
blonde hair, which curled in deep, even waves as if
she had just had a fresh marcel, her hazel eyes, which
often looked black, gave her an appearance both un-
usual and fashionable. She was a trifle under medium
height with small delicate features and a rose leaf
quality in her skin.
164 THE LOVE LEGEND
Toward the end of the year, she had become ac-
quainted with a youngster who was in her English
class. He wrote things that she liked. He admired
her very much. They lunched together frequently.
But Dizzy was awkward about making it appear that
their friendship was purely platonic. The young man
had no such notion, but he had not the courage to tell
Dizzy so. One warm night they walked down on the
beach talking about satire in the Victorian novel. In
the moonlight, the young man tried to kiss her. She
repulsed him, with a flat feeling. It seemed so banal
to her, though such a thing had never happened before.
She never saw him again.
IV
In the meantime that year had brought changes for
Sari. Cecil had got the offer of a job to go with a
vaudeville sketch playing the ukelele and the cornet.
The money had been so much better that he had felt
that he dare not refuse. Sari had remained at home
and he had gone on the road playing Rockford,
Racine, Kankakee, and similar towns three nights a
week, then jumping to the next town. When he was
near enough to Chicago, as when he played Elgin, he
came home to see Sari.
In April Mrs. Harris and Ward discovered that Sari
was expecting another baby in September. Shortly
after, Cecil's act broke up and he came home to make
the round of vaudeville agencies and movie houses.
He was lucky enough to get a job playing in the Lake-
shore movie at twenty-five dollars a week. He also
got a short-houred clerical job at the steel mills which
paid him fifteen dollars a week.
In June, Nita wrote that she was coming home. She
THE LOVE LEGEND 165
and Howard had arranged to be married in August.
She would buy a few of her things in New York, but
most of them she wanted to have Ward help her select.
J/fary, Helene and Ward all looked forward with
eagerness to her coming, and all planned for her
wedding.
Nothing of much importance occurred to Nita in
New York. She did not even learn that she was not
an artist. She sold a number of drawings to adver-
tising firms, and studied fairly hard. She was the
center and confident of a number of other girl art
students, all of whom were more popular with men
than Nita, and all of whom Nita patronized because
their affairs had not the pure flavor of her own. She
made a fourth on many parties arranged by other
girls, but had only one conquest during her stay of
nearly two years. That was a pale slender young
architect who sent her flowers and whose attentions
she accepted because her allowance and income from
her work did not buy her as many dinners in first class
places as she wanted.
She wrote to Howard every week, and kept a copy
of every letter she sent him. He wrote every week,
and occasionally oftener. He sent her many pictures
of himself, snapshots, sketches, and photographs. All
the girls she knew, knew about Howard. They all
thought it an ideal match. Nita herself thought so.
CHAPTER IX
I
THE hot days of July waxed uncomfortably for Sari.
The pleasant excitement that had attended the birth of
Tyndall was absent hi the coming of this second child.
Lakeshore felt that she really should have restrained
herself from having another baby. The first might be
excused on the ground of extreme youth, but to have
a second! The hope that it would be a girl was the
only mitigating ray in the general depression of the
neighborhood about Sari.
Nita came home during the last week of the month
very smart, with much new baggage and a half dozen
New York gowns, requiring to be totally outfitted in
lingerie. Ward and Mrs. Harris busily and happily
prepared for a shopping festival. Both of them were
happy in the thought of outfitting Nita for her
nuptials.
Sari had not forgiven Nita for the telegram, though
it had furnished her with a pretext for marriage; a
fact that neither she nor Cecil realized. So a slight
constraint heightened by Sari's open lack of interest in
the wedding preparations was apparent between the
two, after the first flush of greeting had died.
Dizzy, too, was bored by Nita's simple prepara-
tions and shut herself up to study whenever family
discussions turned on this subject, which was most of
the time.
Nita, herself, was rather flurried, wondering
^whether, after all, Howard was the right man, yet
166
THE LOVE LEGEND 167.
knowing all the time that she was going to marry him.
A slight breach had taken place between them when
he had suggested that she come west to marry him,
as his vacation was to be so short that he would be
compelled to spend all his time traveling. Nita had
written angrily that he had transgressed a law of
chivalry that had existed from time immemorial: the
prince must fetch his bride.
II
The wedding was to be simple, quiet. With no one
outside the family it was to take place in the living
room, at noon, and the young married couple were to
go on west by an afternoon train.
Nita was secretly agitated about Sari's appearance.
She hated the thought that Howard would have to see
her. She snobbishly dreaded having him find out that
Sari had married a Jew.
"I wish father could have lived to marry me," said
Anita, two days before the wedding.
"Father!" said Dizzy. "What do you know of
father. You picture him as a doddering old fellow
who would go around saying, 'It was on an August
day just like this that your mother made me the hap-
piest of men, or it was just twenty-six years ago today
that your mother first looked into my eyes and surren-
dered.' That's the way you picture him, as a senti-
mental old ass in the best mother tradition!"
"And you picture him as an appendix to the Ency-
clopedia Brittanica."
"He was probably both since he begat both you and
Diz," said Sari.
"You think I'm sentimental?" asked Nita.
168 THE LOVE LEGEND
"Certainly, I do."
"You and Dizzy are the sentimental ones. Dizzy
thinks she's going to be the greatest writer of her gen-
eration. Sari thinks she'll be something else, heaven
knows what. And you sit and talk about it in the
most serious way."
"If there was only some way to knock you over the
head, Anita, and make you realize that all serious
thought is not ridiculous. As long as ideas are old and
reliable you are willing to talk about them. But the
minute anything comes up that isn't shopworn you
begin to jeer and call it quee^ "
The talk was becoming warm. Nita was irritated.
"Queer ideas are nothing more than soft spots. I
hate soft spots. I hate people who are not quite all
there. People who do things to disgrace them-
selves "
"Do you mean me?" asked Sari.
"Well, Sari, you have disgraced yourself, since you
ask me. You have disgraced mother, and I I feel
disgraced."
"Well, I'm glad at any rate that I haven't disgraced
Dizzy and Ward," said Sari cheerfully.
"You don't care," went on Nita, bitterly urged by
Sari's flippancy. "You don't care that my wedding
has to be disgraced by your dirty little Jew "
"So that's it!" Sari rose to her feet thoroughly
angry. "Now I see why you've been so mean ever
since I came home."
Dizzy looked at Nita and spoke with an even, insult-
ing accent.
"Nita has no principles herself, so it's obviously on
Howard's account that she objects. I'm glad that she
has placed Howard in his proper niche. It's only the
extremely stupid who are anti-Semitic these days."
THE LOVE LEGEND 169
"Of course," said Sari. "How stupid I've been not
to guess that she's never told Howard Blackton that
Cecil is a Jew, and she doesn't want him to find out."
She turned her back on Nita and shivered. "Oh,
you snob!" She sent a glance over her shoulder of
physical disgust. "Well, you needn't worry. We'll
not be here for the wedding."
She left the room.
Dizzy and Nita looked at each other.
"She's absolutely right, Nita. You're a rotten
snob."
Nita looking somewhat dashed, put on her kitten-
in-the-cream laugh. "I know it. I am a snob. I just
can't bear to have Howard know. And yet I suppose
I'll have to make the best of it."
"She said she wouldn't be here for the wedding,
and I have an idea that she means to keep her word."
"Oh well, where can she go? Of course she'll be
here."
Ill
An hour later Sari came down dressed for the
street, with little Tyndall dressed and bonneted.
"Where are you going?" asked Ward, who had been
told about Nita's remarks.
"I'm leaving," said Sari cheerfully.
"Oh Sari!"
"What is it?"
"You don't mean, you're really leaving? Leaving
home, I mean."
"You said it, kid. I'm leaving the old homestead."
"But darling, you haven't any money. Think!
Don't be silly ! You can't ! "
170 THE LOVE LEGEND
"Don't be a little fool, Sari," said Dizzy. "Just
because Nita proves she's a pig. We've always all
known it anyway. This is only one manifestation
of the colossal selfishness she's always displayed."
Nita treated, and indeed thought of, this remark as
part of Dizzy's queerness. She was very white. "I
apologize, Sari. Don't go away."
"Your apology should be to Cecil," said Sari coldly.
"You owe me nothing. And if you did, you'd never
get a chance to pay it because you'll never see me
again."
"Oh Sari, you can't keep your threat to go? In
your condition." It was wrung from Nita. The other
two waited anxiously for her answer.
She said nothing, only pointed to Cecil who was
staggering down the stairs with two heavy bags.
"But Sari, where will you go? You have no money."
"Her dirty little Jew will take care of her," said
Cecil.
This bit of melodrama brought the tears to Ward's
eyes, and brought satisfaction into the bosom of the
De Jonghe family, gilding their departure for Cecil's
aunt's.
Ward went to the window and watched them climb
into a taxi through her tears. She had grown very
close to Sari, closer than she was to Nita. She could
not help blaming Nita in her heart. She longed to go
with them. She would miss the baby so.
When her mother came home from a meeting of
the Woman's club, it was Ward who broke the news
to her. Nita had shut herself up in her room, and
Dizzy had gone to walk along the lake shore. Mrs.
Harris went to bed, sick with fear for Sari's safety,
nor did she recover for the wedding.
THE LOVE LEGEND 171
IV
This event cast a shadow over Nita's wedding.
Mrs. Harris grew worse as the days drew near for
the wedding. When a short note came to her from
Sari saying that she was all right and would go to a
hospital soon, Mrs. Harris rallied spiritually, but her
body responded slowly.
And so Nita, in riding away beside the prince, did
not divulge to him that his future sons would have
Jewish cousins. Before she left her girlhood behind
she wrote three resolutions neatly in a little book for
her future guidance:
(1) To say nothing mean about anybody or any-
thing.
(2) To tell the truth, and avoid even social fibs if
possible.
(3) To be spontaneous. Not self-conscious.
With these she hoped to conquer California.
Said Mrs. Harris: "It's a wonderful thing that slips
of girls like Nita are always turning their backs on
all they've known and learned to trust, and faring
forth into a strange land with a strange companion.
God only knows how much the world owes to that
daring of ignorance, and innocence and love. There's
something sublime about it, that going without stop-
ping to question. I couldn't do it now as I did when
I was a child like Nita. But I can admire her for
doing it. But why did I suffer all that lonesomeness
for if not to understand my children?"
172 THE LOVE LEGEND
The first letter from her caused some excitement
even to Dizzy.
"Let's see what Nita has to say and how she likes
matrimony," said Ward. "Aren't you anxious to
hear?"
"Interested to see if the impressions I have formed
of what she will say is correct," said Dizzy. "She'll
say that marriage is wonderful and solves most of the
social problems or something of the sort. Read and
see."
"Dearest Dizzy and Ward:
"I'm as purry and pleased and contented and smug-
gish as I can be. I read Mrs. Farmer's 'Boston Cook
Book' and consider it a great piece of literature.
Howard treats me so much like a real mother treats
her first child that I almost catch myself oogly-gooing
at him. Won't I be a mess at this rate.
"California is gloriously wonderful. That is, the
southern part. It makes Chicago seem like a grizzled,
hard old financier who says 'ain't' and makes mil-
lions, and Santa Barbara is the Gaby Deslys he spends
it on.
"An oil lease is unique and unbromidic, only that
they are now so civilized they have lost all talking
points. We live right in the foothills with mountains
behind. The men look as though any moment they
might ask for the next dance. The company is fi-
nanced by eastern money, and there are Bostonians
and New Yorkers all over the place. The oil company
buildings are green and white, and the houses are really
charming. Ours is like six sun parlors, all French
doors, windows and porches, cream walls, black floors,
yellow painted furniture and white wicker.
"The ocean is just fifteen miles away and in our one
THE LOVE LEGEND 173
week at home we went down several times to swim
and dance. I drive Howard to work every morning
in the car, and then I can spend the day at the beach
if I want to. There are many hotels and road houses
along the way and so when Ward comes we can play
together a lot. The company house, gasoline, gas,
electricity, Jap maid service and yard man come free,
and the company runs the dining rooms in dining car
style. So I haven't a thing to do.
"I liked it last week as I had a few illustrations to
send to New York, but I feel that in another week
I'll be in Los Angeles looking for some illustrating
to do.
"Ward, dear, I believe all the kicking, yearning young
things we used to say down on the beach show how
mysteriously off the track the unmarried are. They
are the problematical, cryptic, uninteresting outfit. I
don't see how Shaw and Bennett talked so earnestly
with knitted brows over matrimony, if they married
old style unless it is to whet the interest of the
thoughtful young. For just get married and the world
unkinks, the clouds roll away, and you are all ready
to really begin to do something.
"I'm glad I had sense enough to stick to Howard.
I feel as if I've done exactly what I'm supposed to do
and that life couldn't be anything but jolly and pros-
perous and stimulating. It should be easy to do with
it what one might choose, and it seems impossible to
jar any uncongeniality into Howard and me. Write
soon, darling, both of you, and let me hear how you
are getting along.
Love, NITA."
T
"Sickening," ejaculated Dizzy. "What did I tell
you? She's incurably sentimental and righteous. She
174 THE LOVE LEGEND
could never make a mistake and the bourgeois horror
of her adventure has been colored by her imagination.
She mistakes an automobile and a house with French
windows for spiritual setting the beefish caresses of
her Howard for love. Sickening."
"Oh Dizzy," protested Ward. "I think it's wonder-
ful. I really do. It's my idea of real romance."
"Ward," said Dizzy earnestly. "I used to think
when I was younger I did underestimate you to the
degree that I would take it for granted that you might
think of matrimony as a course, and of eligible peo-
ple as 'prospects.' But I know now that you are
above that sort of thing. I would rather see you an
old maid than married as Nita was; to fall 'in love'
because it was an easy and pleasant thing to do. Such
marriages, draped about with a sense of unreality a
false beauty have little real love in them. Marriage
to regular people is having to marry a specific person.
Nita was twenty-two. She began to worry about a
husband. Howard Blackton appeared and she took
him. So don't be fooled into a sort of sentimental
envy for Nita."
CHAPTER X
ON Michigan avenue in the ornate apartment of
Cecil's aunt little Cecil first heard the sound of motors
buzzing by. He would lie in his luxurious bassenet,
handed down from one of his black-eyed second cou-
sins, hugging his bottle, black brows bent angrily on
the view down the street he was not sweet-natured
like Tyndall, sniffing the smell of gasoline from the
boulevard with marked disgust.
"J love this baby," Sari once told Cecil defiantly.
"I didn't want Tyndall a bit and I rather resented
him, but everyone was so nice about his coming that I
think really at bottom Tyn-tin's coming was rather a
satisfaction to me. But this baby, everyone has been
so idiotic about it, as if I might have been expected
to have one, but that two was too much. As if I 1 could
help it. Poor baby!"
"We mustn't have another," said Cecil. "Simply
can't. Lord knows how we're going to support this
one."
"Cecil dear, it's a rotten mess you're in. If I'd
guessed "
"Oh no. I'm glad. It's only money. That's all."
"I know."
"Not many people who have been married as long
as we still care."
They both firmly believed this. Their love was
unique. It had weathered storms hitherto unheard
175
176 THE LOVE LEGEND
of. No other young people had ever before faced the
poverty, the sneers, the overwhelming and unexpected
family life that they had stood up to shoulder to
shoulder. Sari was not the wonderful girl to Cecil, the
glamourous fairy that she had seemed when he first
heard that she was a real actress, but she had become
solid and eternal, part of his life, like his mother. To
Sari he was no longer a mysterious being. He was
just Cecil. Her life with him did not appear like a
series of dates. Other men were to flirt with, not
Cecil, but still Cecil was something more, her oldest
baby, perhaps.
A connection of Cecil's in New Orleans who owned
a theater offered Cecil a salary that they could live on
down there, playing the piano. So in November of
that year, when Tyn-tin was sixteen months and Junior
two months they packed up and went South to live.
With sadness Sari's family saw them off. Ward and
Dizzy were both depressed at the separation. Desola-
tion settled on Mrs. Harris. She wanted to keep Tyn-
dal, but they didn't know when they would be back in
the north, and they thought the southern climate
would be good for him during the winter. He was a
delicate child.
In New Orleans they lived adventurously and fell
in with a set of artists, writers who confidently ex-
pected to become great some day, and meanwhile com-
mitted all the absurdities of the fictional Bohemian.
Sari's stage ambitions revived and she took to acting
in a very inferior little theater, and flirting harmlessly
with the men of the crowd. Cecil never objected,
never retaliated. He had a theory that jealousy and
love weren't compatible. Outwardly at least, he lived
up to it. He was devoted to the children.
THE LOVE LEGEND 177
II
Mrs. Harris, with two daughters gone away, fell into
a state of chronic invalidism, from a variety of causes
the most obvious one, her constant fretting. She
gave up the greater part of her church activities, and
instead of encouraging social groups to form in her
house, as she had formerly done, became impatient,
even jealous of Ward's friends. She did not want
Ward to marry and leave her. Ward, through her
sweetness and devotion to her mother almost fell into
the position that Helene Partridge occupied in her
home.
Sentiment, thoroughly grounded ideas of self-sacri-
fice, the popular ideal of spreading sunshine were
Ward's foot-hold during those days.
And dreams of Rod, hopeless dreams, almost filled
in the blank spaces in her dull life. For life was very
dull. There were beaux, a few, a couple of faithfuls
from her University days, a young man in the neigh-
borhood who wore marvelous and stunning vests, and
talked about them most of the time, an occasional new
man that she would meet. None of them held her in-
terest. Once her mother had thought of buying a car,
and Ward had been drawn to the good-looking, tweed-
suited young salesman who brought out a Cadillac
coupe that had been used one season. He started an
immediate love affair with Ward, progressing swiftly
and passionately to an embrace in the back of the car,
the first night he took her out. Ward was revolted
and outraged, stunned by the manner of it. She ex-
perienced a Puritan re-action, and dismissed him.
Dizzy and Ward had little in common. Dizzy
studied, came to meals, and disappeared to study. At
178 THE LOVE LEGEND
intervals she wrote but she never showed her work.
In January she entered her fourth year at the Univer-
sity. She had attended summer school steadily, and
would take her degree at the end of the next summer
quarter. It was during this quarter that she took a
course with Robert Herrick and worked as she had
never worked before. Worked! Toiled over her
study table, walked the floor, left the house and
tramped up and down on the walk before the raging
winter lake, thinking, trying to turn herself inside out.
Now and then she had ecstatic moments of triumph.
She was really getting somewhere, she would hug her-
self and exult. And then again tramp, tramp, tramp
by the waters, looking out at the leaden gray, foam
tossed body, harried no less than her own soul from
the thought that would not come. Perhaps those were
the most glorious days of Dizzy's life. And yet she
lived them completely alone.
Ill
Dizzy finished school and got a job almost imme-
diately with the City Press. A trifling, piffling kind
of job that irritated her, tired her, mocked at her.
She had to haunt the courts and report bits of news,
scandal, divorces, suits about property. In the jargon
of the reporters she "did" the courts. There was
no chance of any writing. She simply set down the
facts according to a formula when she was allowed to
write them. Often she just telephoned them in to the
office.
In Chicago, the City press covers most of the rou-
tine news for all of the papers. A staff of reporters
detailed to police stations, courts, hospitals, send the
THE LOVE LEGEND 179
news to the Central office within a few moments of its
occurrence. The news is then shot through automatic
tubes into every local room in the city. And all the
important stories are then given to newspaper report-
ers to investigate and write about by the city editors.
Only occasionally Dizzy saw the thing that she had
written in print.
IV
Nita had been married a year by this time. She
was happy and faintly patronizing to the rest of her
family. She drove her own car, and painted in an
amateur way. She hoped to become a contributor to
Life.
That fall Mrs. Harris became worse. She developed
chronic bronchitis, and coughed so alarmingly that
they had her examined for tuberculosis of the lungs.
She was sound, but the doctor advised her not to spend
the winter in Chicago. She was rejoiced to have the
opportunity of visiting Nita. It was settled that she
was to go to California the first of January.
Nita was now almost twenty-six years old, and had
been married about a year and a half. In June she
was to present that rising young engineer, Howard
Blackton, with a son and heir. The sex a foregone
conclusion. Nita did things that way. The girl who
was to grow up to be nice and correct and without any
of the impractical artistic notions that Nita supposed
herself to possess was to come about a year later.
Thus they planned.
Ward longed to go too, but Dizzy refused to hear of
leaving. She had been promised a job on the Times
the first of the year, and she considered it the best
180 THE LOVE LEGEND
paper in the country. Dizzy was barely twenty and
her mother would not leave her alone in a city reputed
to be as wicked as Chicago. So it was arranged that
she and Ward were to take a small apartment in a re-
spectable family hotel on Lincoln park.
And so Mrs. Harris left fairly happy in the prospect
of seeing her oldest daughter after a period of almost
two years. They rented the house in Lakeshore and
dismissed Olive.
"I hate to part with her," said Ward "because I'm
actually getting her trained. She never does any-
thing unless she's told. I've impressed that much on
her. When I say, 'Now, wash the dishes, Olive,' she
washes the dishes. And she does them well. She's
slow, but she's thorough, if you direct her properly.
When I say, 'put on the squash, Olive,' she puts on the
squash, but she doesn't put on the potatoes, too, unless
I say, Tut on the potatoes, Olive!' And so she's
gradually getting to be of service to me. Her's is
strictly a one-track mind. She's all right as long as
you don't muddle her with two things at once like
saying, 'put on the squash and potatoes for dinner.'
If there is anything to get mixed she loses her head
and mixes it. She's a good soul, though, and I'm fond
of her."
Olive found a place much to her liking in the linen
room of a South Side hotel, where she received
thirty dollars a month in addition to her room, board
and the company of the other domestics. She talked
of nothing else during the last few days but her
new job. She cried on parting with Mrs. Harris and
Ward. She had never before worked so long in one
place, and if they ever kept house again, they had to
take her back, she told them in an astounding burst
of consecutive thought.
THE LOVE LEGEND 181
Sari and Cecil all this time were in New Orleans.
But the ill-luck that pursued Cecil caused his relative
to sell his theater, and offer Cecil his fare back to Chi-
cago. And so they came about the middle of Jan-
uary, without letting Ward and Dizzy know of their
arrival. They were tired of being continually hard
up, and wanted to get on their feet before they looked
up either his relatives or hers.
Neither of them could get work. Sari's dancing had
fallen down so that it would take at least six months
of hard practicing before she could hope for a job at
her chosen profession. Playing in the movies was the
same old story. The places he could get paid too
little money to make them worth while.
And then Sari answered one of those enticing ads
which may be found in the "Female Help Wanted"
section of almost any newspaper in the country, an
advertisement which tells about pleasant surround-
ings, easy work, short hours and good pay. She be-
came a telephone operator, and tried not to go crazy
sitting on a stiff backed chair with a continual buzzing
in her ears from the apparatus attached to her head,
and a continual hum of raucous voices, "Number Plee-
az! I do not underst yand! Number Plee-az!
You're party does not answer!" Everlastingly, sing-
ingly, droningly it went on around her, as she said
over and over again into the transmitter the set of
phrases with which she was allowed to address the
telephone subscribers.
This move of Sari drove Cecil to a desperate re-
solve. If she could do that sort of thing, so could he.
182 THE LOVE LEGEND
VI
The next morning he hurried out into the street to
buy a paper. Without a glance at the headlines he
turned to the want ad columns, skipped the advertise-
ments listed under the heads "Salesmen Wanted" he
was not to be deluded by the huge commissions of-
fered by the people who inserted the ads and went
on to "Professions and Trades."
"Production, that's the thing these days. It's what
everyone is talking about. And the machinist is the
man who is getting the big money."
Much against his natural desires he entered a shop
at llth and Washington streets. Enquiring at the
door of the shop as to whom he should ask about em-
ployment he was directed to see the foreman of the
machine shop, a smaller building around the corner.
He entered the slim, dark, shabby-looking red brick
building timidly. "Where's the foreman?" he asked a
man who was standing near a desk as he came in
the room.
"You're talkin' to him right now."
"I'm looking for a job."
"What kind of work can you do?"
"I'm a screw machine operator."
"Screw machine hand, huh. Well we've got a new
SB-Foster here and if you can run it you get the job."
"I know I can run it," Cecil said.
"Where didja ever work before?"
"Uh ah, in St. Louis."
"All right, here's a card. Go up to the Employment
office at the Lowry building and get it filled out and
then come back here at six o'clock tonight. We pay
seventy-five cents an hour."
THE LOVE LEGEND 183
"This must be night work," he thought as he went
to get his card filled out.
He hurried back in order to be with the babies be-
fore Sari set out for work.
"I'm a screw machine hand now, old thing!"
"Go on!"
"Yes, I am. Look here!" He exhibited his card.
"What do you know about handling screw ma-
chines?"
"Not a darn thing. But I'm going to get by or bust.
I ought to pull down fifty or so a week."
"No?" Sari was not so credulous about salaries as
she had been. "How do you get that way?"
"Fact. Now listen. I'm going to work nights, so I
can take care of the babies in the daytime and do the
housework. Will you be afraid nights alone?"
"Oh Cecil, Cecil, when are things going to start to
get better?"
VII
Cecil was at the shop a few minutes before six.
Long rows of black dirty looking machines lined the
building. Men were taking off their street clothes and
replacing them with overalls, aprons, sateen caps. A
young man, his head bare, his throat open at the neck
and every apparent particle of his skin covered with
black, came up to Cecil.
He reached for Cecil's card. "Oh, yeh, you're the
new man that Gus said was goin' to run the SB-Fos-
ter. All right come on, I'll show it to you!"
If he had been a dog Cecil's tail would have been
between his legs as he followed the young man down
an endless line of huge black-looking monsters where
184 THE LOVE LEGEND
men were already switching on lights and throwing
their machines into gear.
Beside the largest and most ominous-looking ma-
chine of all they came to a stop.
"Here she is," said the man.
"I never" he stopped; he had been going to say
he had never seen a machine like that before. " ran
a machine just like this one before."
"What the Hell kind did you ever run," the young
man wanted to know.
"Well, a different kind."
"You guys make me sick. Coming in here and
wanting to be a machinist when you ain't even got a
right to be an apprentice. Here I'll show you how it
goes!"
With astonishing ease the young man connected the
machine to the motor.
"The job's all set up. There's a big contract for
gears that we got and we're working the machine day
and night. Here, I'll run off a few for you!"
The machine started to hum. A pipe running from
the bed of the machine began to pour forth a steady
stream of a whitish fluid. "This is the water," said
the man. "It keeps the tools from burning up. Here's
the cross feed. Start this tool in to shape your gear.
Keep your mike on it all . . ." He explained in detail
as he went along how the machine was manipulated.
After several shiny-looking gears were cut off he turned
to Cecil and told him to try it. "I've got to go 'way
now."
By midnight, after numerous visits from the fore-
man and after a huge quantity of steel had been wasted
Cecil managed to produce one piece that measured up
to all the requirements. The foreman came back.
Cecil proudly showed him the fruit of his labor.
THE LOVE LEGEND 185
"Well, it's half past twelve now so we're goin' out to
eat,'" said the foreman. "We'll have to do something
with all this stuff you've scrapped or the day boss will
fire you in the morning."
VIII
Night after night Cecil sat before the giant machine.
A milky fluid ran smoothly from a pipe on the ma-
chine directly above the piece of steel that was being
shaped. It cooled the metal as the forming tool pared
off thin layers of steel that coiled and writhed upward
with a hissing sound. The turret bore down heavily,
clumsily, and Cecil steered the drill into the center of
the piece of steel. It entered with a grinding noise.
The man at the machine next him was bent. His
arms, bare to the shoulders, were covered with a thick
varnish of black grease. Under it his muscles were
modeled in pitch. From time to time he wiped white
drops of water from his forehead with a hurried ges-
ture, as he chanted:
"Every wheel is turnin'
Hotalmighty
Every knocker's knockin'
Hotalmighty
Every tool is cuttin'
Hotalmighty."
He was being paid eight cents for each, of the pieces
of finished steel that passed the material inspector.
His machine broke down with a sullen noise.
The man exhausted himself in cursing and then sat
down on a box near the machine. He got to his feet
stiffly and shambled over to Cecil.
186 THE LOVE LEGEND
"God damn. It'll take these boneheads an hour to
fix up that baby and that means two cold bucks out of
my pocket. Oh well . . ."
For eleven hours and a half for six nights a week
Cecil toiled. In compensation he received a little less
than fifty dollars a week.
BOOK THREE
DIZZY
CHAPTER I
DIZZY, now thoroughly established as a newspaper
woman in the Times office, pursued her days with
gusto. Each day, between ten and noon, she sat be-
fore a typewriter, racking, transporting, corroding,
ravishing her soul, trying to imbue her work with the
mordant flush she desired.
The apartment in which she lived with Ward was
in the Astor hotel on the edge of the park. Two
rooms, complexioned a dun monochrome, looked out
on a hueless stone paved alley.
One Sunday afternoon she came from a meeting of
Socialists held in the Coliseum. Ward, reading in the
windowless, decolorized sitting room, looked up to ask
smilingly how the meeting had been.
Dizzy laughed. "Horrible. Why are people so
stupid? I remember when I used to say that I could
convince any workingman of the value of industrial
unionism now, I'm beginning to think that they
won't realize it until it's knocked into them with can-
nons even then I wonder if they'll really see. When
they begin to get faint glimmerings of socialism the
common people are more horrible than ever
"I thought this afternoon of the time I went to a
socialist lecture with father. You remember how I
stood up and shouted at the audience: 'You dogs and
fools, that's not the place to applaud.' They ap-
plauded everything that they shouldn't have, this aft-
ernoon. The speaker said, 'The capitalists will find a
189
190 THE LOVE LEGEND
way to get you. They got Victor Berger out of the
House. They got Eugene V. Debs in prison, and next
year they will find a way to have all the Socialist
votes stricken out at the polls.' Cheers and wild ap-
plause. I felt like prancing like a satyr!"
Ward smiled. She seldom entered into a discussion
with Dizzy. As a result their intercourse was very
harmonious.
"I can never love any man as much as I do you,"
said Dizzy after they had finished eating, and were
lounging in their little sitting room. "You are like
Jennie Gerhart. You are emotionally great. I'm
going to make something out of you, yet. With my
brains and your beauty, we ought to make a fortune.
Perhaps I'll put you on the stage."
Ward smiled calmly. Her poise was never disturbed
by Dizzy's spells of being moved. She made a good
listener and her sympathetic manner, and her beauty,
which had struck Dizzy anew, made her the subject of
frequent outbursts like this from her young sister.
"What is the Custard Pie club, Dizzy?" asked
Ward. "I hear so much about it? A sort of tough
dance hall?"
"Good gracious, no!" said Dizzy. "It's a hotbed of
radicals and parlor bolshevists. I've been intending
to go and visit it some night. They have meetings
every Sunday evening. If you have nothing on, we
might go tonight. I'm curious to see it. I might get
a little story. I don't suppose I can consider myself
a full-fledged reporter until I've kidded the Custard
Pies through the public prints."
"I'd rather like to go," said Ward. "Do let's go to-
night? Shall we have to take a couple of men? Do
they dance?"
THE LOVE LEGEND 191
"No, I think it's all pure discussion. Nothing as
frivolous as dancing."
"But do they serve liquor on the sly? What makes
it so bad? Why does everybody shake his head over
it?"
"Well, people shake their heads over anything. It's
a lot more respectable than some of those road-houses
and exclusive dubs if the truth were really known, I
haven't any doubt. These people are just harmless
little I. W. W.'s whose free discussion of everything
pertaining to art, politics and religion has caused a lot
of conventional old idiots to hold up their hands in
holy horror."
The telephone rang. It was one of Ward's beaux.
She had half a dozen who were forever annoying Dizzy
by distracting her sister's attention. This young man,
being unimportant, was dismissed by Ward in favor of
Dizzy's invitation.
"It's wonderful being a reporter lydy," said Dizzy,
when Ward was once more back in her place. "I'm
really happy now for the first time in my life. I've
got real work and you. I feel somehow like a suc-
cessful man must feel having a beautiful wife to come
home to, to soothe his aesthetic sense and listen to his
ideas intelligently.
"In the horrid, hectic, fear-ridden atmosphere of
this city that there should be or could be sensation in
the touching of a lovely flower is grotesque, ridiculous.
Every night, I hear the city outside my window, and
it is tumultuous, overwhelming for a second, until I
think of you, lying there calm, beautiful. It's almost
unbelievable." She mused on for some moments,
forming word combinations in her mind that pleased
her, and then her thoughts drifted to the office.
"There's a lydy in our office that's a worse vamp
192 THE LOVE LEGEND
than you are, dear." ' Dizzy 1 had taken to ornamenting
her talk with tid-bits of jargon which she had picked
up among the garish intellectuals who wrote for the
Times. Jim Stein, with a tingent genius for coloring
the most sallow stories, bedizened his conversation
with what he called "a million different shades, a mil-
lion different grotesques." And from him and other
reporters, Dizzy had absorbed a pallid slang.
"Really?" asked Ward encouragingly. "How does
she excel me?"
"She excels you in weight, for one thing. If she
weren't the only other lydy reporter on the staff, and
if people might not think that I was jealous of her I'd
even say that she was fat. And she's got it all over
you in sentiment, too. She's the most sentimental
person that I have ever been unfortunate enough to
meet.
"Everything is simply wonder-r-r-ful, with a rising
crescendo as far as the wonder, and then a fall on the
r. Every day is an anniversary with her. I met her
in the wash room yesterday, and without a moment's
warning she said, 'It was just a year ago today that
the most wonder-r-r-ful man in the wor-r-rld took me
in his arms and told me that he loved me.' The man
is dead, and so my sense of decency made me look
sympathetic. But I was outraged. I tell you I was
outraged."
She laughed. Ward smiled at the imitation.
"Mr. Burns you know, Peter Oscar Burns, the lit-
erary critic is in love with her. And so is little Georgie
Cotton, and a dignified guy that does something to the
editorial pages, too. All of them married, except
Georgie. Jim Stein told me that the three of them sit
and discuss her by the hour.
"Petie Burns is getting in with the New York crit-
THE LOVE LEGEND 193
ics. He goes down to New York twice a year and
they wine him and dine him, and he feels that he's got
to keep up his end as a lit'ry bird. And so he'd like
to have Pearl for his mistress. I mean, you know,
they all have a lot of women those lit'ry guys in New
York, and Petie's only got a wife. Imagine the fool
that he'll look in New York with nothing but a wife, if
he goes down there to live. Jim Stein says he brought
Pearl up from the business office. He's educating her,
planning to seduce her. And she's getting all sorts of
lit'ry ideas. She reads all the new books and talks
about style "
"Why Dizzy, how terrible I Is she beautiful?"
"Not particularly. She's fat. She's just like any
fat girl who takes herself seriously. She oozes dig-
nity and poise and self-possession. Jim Stein is the
only one of the four they are inseparable, you know
who hasn't fallen for her. He says she talks sex to all
the men, but keeps them at a distance. And sentimen-
tal! She must be about twenty-six but she gushes as
if she were ten years younger, slowly, with perfect
enunciation, and ponderous assurance. She prefaces
every one of her remarks with 'I feel that ' Each
conversation is a dissertation on her re-actions. Six
months ago she lost a sweetheart. She relates her
emotional experiences with this man to me. I'm out-
raged. I'm insulted. But what can I do?"
Ward still smiled. She had never confided any of
her emotional experiences to Dizzy and a faint feeling
of pity for the unfortunate Pearl who had confided in
Dizzy came into her consciousness.
"She insults me with anecdotes like this," went on
Dizzy. "She says, 'Once the most wonder-r-rful man
in the world was away from me. And suddenly I had
a feeling that perhaps he might like to read over his
194 THE LOVE LEGEND
letters to me, and so I sent them to him through the
mails. And at the same time he had the same feeling
about me. And he sent me my letters. And the pack-
ages crossed in the mails. Isn't it wonderful?' "
II
The telephone rang. Ward answered.
"Hello Yes Oh how do you do Mr. Glosser "
It was the man of whom Dizzy least approved. Di-
vorced from his wife, approaching forty, partially bald,
she might have felt a generous toleration for him. But
he was a capitalist. It was too much to overlook.
"My sister? She doesn't go out very often. She
works, you know and she doesn't feel that she can
take time off in the evening. No, but she needs rest
you see? I'll ask her, but I can't give you much en-
couragement. Well, perhaps if you call up next Sun-
day." Ward turned from the phone.
"Mortimer Glosser says a young man wants to
meet you, Dizzy. He's seen you, or heard about you,
or something, I didn't quite get it. Anyway the young
man's impressed with you, it seems, and Mr. Glosser
has asked us both to have dinner with him when he
gets back from New York and meet this young man.
He's leaving tonight for New York. So I told him to
call up when he gets back Sunday and I'd try to per-
suade you to go."
"You will be entirely unsuccessful," said Dizzy
promptly. "Hurry up, it is getting late and we don't
want to miss anything down at the Custard Pie Club."
CHAPTER II
THE Custard Pie Club may be discovered up Ben-
son's Lane. A row of painted custard pies, wan and
sallow, mark the faint green door, dimmed with alley
dust and lettered "The Custard Pie Club."
Inside is a big comfortable room with an arrange-
ment at one end that is half bar, half kitchen. Color
daubed benches, tables and chairs, are scattered about.
The room is cheerfully done in pale blues, greens and
yellows in the scheme of a futuristic bathroom. An
inferior sort of piano, a long mirror and several small
electric stoves are the only other furnishings except a
profusion of drawings, newspaper clippings, signed
poems and posters that decorate the walls. Prominent
among these are several large caricatures, paintings and
silhouettes of the genius of the place, one Texas Flynn,
Emperor of the parlour Radicals. An exploiter of the
abnormal, this genial host takes in the quarters at the
door with much humorous cursing, and ungrammati-
cally pits groping poet against struggling artist in the
weekly discussions on Sunday evening.
According to a legend by Sherwood Anderson, Texas
Flynn arrived out of nowhere a housepainter with
sympathies for the overworked. He took up his quar-
ters in the old garage that afterward became the Cus-
tard Pie, and made a home for the sad-eyed hobo
whose only dwelling was a park around the corner
with the squirrels. Soap box orators were given a pul-
pit in the retreat of Texas Flynn.
195
196 THE LOVE LEGEND
But it was not until Carl Sandburg, Ben Hecht and
Anderson began to write it up in the papers, that it be-
came known. Cub reporters began to make its semi-
weekly meetings. Tex Flynn never discouraged them.
He cracked his whip and exhibited his eager young
souls unmercifully for the sarcastic and commercial-
minded young newspaper men, who dripped facile sar-
casms about the Custard Pies through the press.
People like Mrs. Partridge read and shuddered.
But from Evanston to South Chicago, from the Loop
to Oak Park the onlookers come in clans, in tribes, in
bevies. A professor of literature at the University of
Chicago can be discovered on a Sunday night, sitting
with his knees under his chin in the first row; and as
the seats graduate upward, perhaps the feet of an ex-
convict may be found dangling between those of a
plumber and a member of the board of trade.
II
Ward and Dizzy opened the door which resembled
a crumpled lettuce leaf. The room was deserted save
for three people who lounged around a man taking
tickets at the entrance to the hall upstairs. They
made their way curiously across the wide room, their
attention caught here and there by the signs on the
walls, and some of the larger drawings.
Up a narrow dark enclosed staircase they came out
at last into a pleasant mosaic of fashionables and tat-
terdemalions. On the platform a pale girl was reading
a poem. Her blonde hair curled in disorder about her
face. A loose smoke colored gown, merging into pur-
ple, circumfused her like a violet pool.
When she paused and began a new poem, which she
THE LOVE LEGEND 197,
said was called "Ugliness," Dizzy and Ward focused
their attentions on her.
"Huddled in the bed in the moments after I wake
Swaddled about with musty covers, meant to keep the damp
dawn out.
My sins come and clamp themselves upon my body
Biting into my flesh like thumb tacks stuck in fantastic design
Upon a drawing board.
Lust starts at my toes and travels upward
My sweetheart is a conventional young man.
He hates to read a thing like this.
He thinks of my body as a symmetrical sugar bowl
Filled with an emotion like soothing syrup
Bitterness beats in my arteries because my life has been a round
of trifles,
Or because my lover did not telephone last night as he promised.
Hate grips me for the pattern of the paper on the wall
Or for a possible woman who may take my lover from me."
Dissipated approval melted into a confluence of ap-
plause.
A man with hair like broom straws arose and ha-
rangued in broken English, unintelligible to Dizzy and
Ward. A slender, blue eyed youth with his hair poeti-
cally drooping over his eyes answered him. And it
appeared that the subject under discussion had veered
to the question: Was it really necessary to have men
in the human race? The blue eyed youth argued that
since woman did all the work of the world and all
great men had cribbed their greatness from a wife,
sweetheart or mother, all men should be exterminated
in babyhood, with the exception of a choice number
who should be kept for the purpose of carrying on the
race.
"All I gotta say is that men was pretty smart to
fool the women all these years if that's the case," a
voice from the audience shouted. The youth paid no
attention but fixed his eyes on the supernal blue and
green ceiling. When he finished his talk, the man
with the broom straw hair delivered himself of argu-
198 THE LOVE LEGEND
ments, inspired by the blue eyed boy. This time Dizzy
and Ward were able to make out a complete sentence
occasionally.
"Look ad de spinster," he shouted. "De spinster
knows how to do widout men Afder de eggs is
hadched de female spinster kills de male spinster "
Laughs interrupted him as it spirtled to the audience
that he meant spider. Individuals squirmed in their
seats a few rose and left. Others moved forward.
Another girl had risen to speak. Dizzy and Ward
looking toward the platform, gasped and clutched each
other. The girl was Sari.
Sari was coming to the defense of man, saving him,
as it were, from extinction. Neither Ward nor Dizzy
heard her arguments. They were absorbed in wonder-
ing, anxious for her to finish, eager to see her, Ward
a little ashamed of her conspicuousness, Dizzy amused.
Ill
They made their way to the front as soon as the
meeting was over. Sari, flushed, laughing, in the cen-
ter of a group, suddenly saw them.
"Ward, oh Ward, I'm glad to see you." She em-
phasized her speech with her old vividness. "Oh
Dizzy." She kissed them enthusiastically.
"Sari, what on earth? What are you doing here?
Where is Cecil?" Ward demanded incoherently.
"We've missed you horribly! Mother will be so glad
I've seen you. How in the world did you get here?"
"Darling, I live here," said Sari. "Cecil and I have
two of the cunningest rooms back of the chapel here.
Tex Flynn is a darb. He let us have them awfully
reasonably. Come on back and see the little patooties.
THE LOVE LEGEND 199
Cecil is taking care of them. Oh there he is now!"
She turned.
In the doorway of the now almost deserted chapel,
Cecil, looking a little tired and pale, leaned. He
smiled with his old adoring look at Sari, and waved
his hand without surprise at the girls. Cecil professed
to have a great admiration for the Chinese impassi-
bility and strove always to emulate it.
Sari bounded eagerly across the room, throwing a
word to the blue-eyed youth who had talked so elo-
quently. "Wait, Raleigh, I'll be back. I want you to
meet my sisters."
She led Ward and Dizzy through a little dark hall-
way and into her apartments, which had been deco-
rated in the same color scheme as the Custard Pie and
which had much the same sort of artist's debris on
the walls. In a corner two small beds were each in-
habited by a little De Jonghe. The fascinating Tyn-
dall slept with a chubby fist in his cheek. His father
exhibited baby Cecil, pulling back a bit of cover with
a touch as light as a fly's wing, while Sari hung over
him, holding her breath.
Cecil, olive-skinned and black browed, slept with
his long lashes throwing off a sheen against the color
in his cheeks.
"Sari! He's a real beauty isn't he? He's almost
as big as Tyndall."
"Yes," whispered Sari. "Tin-tin isn't very well,
I'm afraid. Oh he's all right, but he's not husky like
Junior. Junior is going to be big. Tin-tin's a bit un-
dersized."
"Oh I've missed little Tyndall," said Ward. "I
didn't realize how much until now. Isn't he darling?
May I come and see him tomorrow?"
"Well, I'm working down at the telephone exchange.
200 THE LOVE LEGEND
Cecil will be here. He's out of a job just now. But
he's going to get something. The doctor won't let him
work, just yet. His health broke down in that horrid
machine shop."
"Machine shop?"
"Yes. He found he could get fifty dollars a week by
working in a shop, and he had to work twelve hours a
day, but he couldn't stand it, poor boy. Don't say
anything. He feels awful because he's not working,
poor old chap. He's been splendid. And I'm a pig
to him. But come on, I simply can't stand it here.
We're all going out on a party, and I promised Raleigh
Minster that I'd bring you, Ward. You will come?"
"But what about the babies," said Ward. "You
don't leave them alone, do you?"
"Oh Cecil will stay with them. Come on. I know
it's horrible of me to leave him, but I simply can't
stand it to stay. And he's so perfectly dear about it."
She rushed over and kissed Cecil, who had been
talking to Dizzy in a low tone.
"Don't you want to come out and meet some of the
Custard Pies?" whispered Sari to Dizzy. "Ward is
coming."
Dizzy agreed enthusiastically. She had been wish-
ing for an opportunity to see some of them closer.
IV
In the basement at North side Turner Hall, the
choice spirits of the club gathered around Ward and
Dizzy.
Ward sat between the notorious Fat Richmond and
Raleigh Minster. Fat Richmond had been in jail for
violations of the vagrancy law, and the Mann act. He
was a noted leader of the I. W. W. The government
THE LOVE LEGEND 201
had been on the point of deporting him to Russia for
some time. He was middle-aged, Jewish, enormous,
with amorous dark eyes and a clear dark skin. His
black silky hair abundantly and gracefully outlined
his head. He wore soft collars, and lounged in his
seat, letting his bulk ooze out over the chair like
bread rising over a pan.
On his other side sat his wife, small, slender, pre-
maturely aged, wearing a picture hat and the simple
school-girlish dress which she affected. She adored
him. Her presence never debarred him from any
phase of love-making. She was the trusted member
of his harem.
At one corner sat a youth with a delicate pink skin,
who played daintily with his food, and looked about
with a pensive gaze. Ward thought that he looked as
if his hair had been treated to a henna rinse. His
eyebrows were partially pulled out, and pencilled; his
greenish brilliant eyes had a piercing mystery.
"Who is that?" asked Ward of Raleigh Minster.
"That's Dorian Gray," said Raleigh with a look
meant to convey something to her, she felt sure. But
as she had never read Dorian Gray, and had forgotten
that there was such a book, she supposed that it was
the young man's name. On her left Fat Richmond
had placed his arms on the back of her chair and was
letting his words trickle out like a brook hissing
through stones.
"What is it about you that makes all men fall in
love with you?"
Ward edging away from a possible physical contact
murmured a nonsensical answer. On her other side
Raleigh Minster was plying her with attention. She
turned to the slender young man to escape Richmond's
liquid eye.
202 THE LOVE LEGEND
Janet Millwright, the girl who had recited the poem,
was sitting on the other side of Raleigh at the end of
the table.
He rose and delivered a speech about Ward's trans-
cendent beauty, a girl in pink, a former sweetheart,
looking rather glum as it progressed. He ended by
proposing that they all show her how much they ap-
preciated her by writing their opinion of her on paper
and giving it to her. "She is a golden child, a beauti-
ful, who has come among us! Let's show her that we
want her in our bunch."
The girl in the pink tarn and smock whispered to
Janet that Sari's sister would surely get her head
turned by all this adulation from the great Raleigh
Minster.
A sheet of paper was passed around. Ward, un-
embarrassed, was bored by what she considered a vul-
gar performance. She smiled a conventional smile of
thanks at everyone, causing the girl in the pink tarn
to whisper that her smile was a little fixed. No doubt
there was some beauty in Ward but it was cold, un-
emotional.
The paper, when it had gone round the circle,
showed no great literary merit, in spite of the inspira-
tion which Raleigh had said they would surely all
feel after looking at Ward. The girls reluctantly
wrote stupid things, the men extravagant things.
Raleigh wrote that he wondered from what exquisite
cameo her profile could have been carved. And Fat
Richmond simply put himself on record, "I feel my-
self slipping!"
Dizzy enjoyed it. She was ponderous and solemn
about the work the Custard Pies were doing for art
and the country. On one side of her was a well known
socialist lawyer, who was new to the club. Dizzy liked
THE LOVE LEGEND 203
him, too. Even Fat Richmond was not objectionable
in her eyes, since she knew him to be a well-known
radical.
Janet had left St. Louis because she was unhappy
over Cecil's cousin Roger. She was studying costume
designing and living at "The Seven Arts Club." She
went about a good deal with Raleigh Minster.
CHAPTER III
I
THERE was one mail delivery on Sunday at the
hotel*
A week later Dizzy bounced into the apartment
waving a letter in her hand
"Hopkins!" she gasped holding out the letter. "Oh
Ward, darling!" She flung her arms around Ward,
and laughed hysterically into her sister's neck.
"Look! Look! Look! Hopkins accepts a story and
sends me a personal note! See his signature! The
great Hopkins! And look, he thinks I write like a
man. He thinks I am a man! He begins My dear
Harris! You know he is the only editor in the United
States I'd care to write for "
"Oh Dizzy dear, wouldn't you really rather be on
the Saturday Evening Post?"
"Oh Ward, how can you?" said Dizzy. "And just
when I'm so happy. See, he sent me a check for
twenty-five dollars!"
"Oh!"
"Well?"
"I thought you'd get more!"
"Oh my dear, I don't want more. I'm so glad jiust
to be accepted. Just think. 'The Shadow Scroll,'
by E. W. Harris. Oh, we must have a party! "
The telephone rang as if in answer. "Oh Ward, if
that is some tiresome man, tell him you're engaged for
the day with me."
"But Dizzy, I promised the day to Mr. Glosser,"
204
THE LOVE LEGEND 205
said Ward on her way to the phone. Dizzy's elation
fell from her suddenly as Ward took up the receiver.
What was the good of her triumph with no one to
celebrate with her? Ward wasn't really glad. She
was just hatefully, coolly, tactfully giving Dizzy the
professional interest of a spreader of sunshine.
"Oh Dizzy," said Ward from the phone. "That
young man that admired you so is to be with Mr.
Glosser. Won't you come along? They want you,
not me. They want to have a party for you, a long
drive and then dinner in the country some place, will
you?"
"A party," said Dizzy, humorously recovering some
of her spirits. "It's sent by the gods so I don't dare
refuse. I suppose I'll be sorry but I feel just like
going out and being foolish, so I guess I will."
And then she remembered that she had a new tub
silk sport dress, white with a small lavender figure in
it. As she slipped into it she felt very adventurous
and frivolous. Today she meant to be triumphantly a
girl on a party in order to secretly contrast it with the
other personality which she was hugging: E. W. Har-
ris, author.
"It's a date, isn't it?" she said to Ward, looking at
her new dress, her happy face in the mirror. "I don't
remember ever having one before. I suppose I have
but"
"I wish I could persuade you to go out more. Per-
haps you'll like this young Jim Howells."
"I shall let me see, I shall vamp him. I've always
meant to vamp somebody when I had the time, and
today I'm just in the mood. Give me some pointers,
will you?"
"You silly Dizzy."
"Of course you're too wise to give any away, aren't
206 THE LOVE LEGEND
you? Never mind, I'm going to watch you, and every-
thing you say to this Mortimer Glosser guy, I shall
imitate."
II
"It's a wonderful day isn't it?" asked Jim.
"I beg of you don't be banal," said Dizzy. "This
is the first party I've ever been on. I want nothing
but party talk. Do something to entertain me."
"The only thing I know is reciting gentle Alice
Brown."
"Isn't there anything more exciting than that to do
on a party? Don't you realize that this is a party?
What do you generally do to make yourself amusing
to girls?"
"Oh I don't know, sometimes I propose to them
"Well then, propose to me. I've never been pro-
posed to."
"With all my heart. Do you accept."
"Of course. DQ you think I would lead you on like
that and then throw you over?"
"Well then we're engaged." For some reason he
was flushing. He had been dreaming of Dizzy for
weeks, ever since he had caught sight of her one night
at the theater. He intensely admired all that he had
heard of her. Then there was something excitingly
virginal to him in the thought that she did not go about
with men.
"When shall we get married?"
"Tonight, at once, how ungallant of you. Isn't it
the tradition that a man always wants to be married
one minute after he has been accepted?"
"But we couldn't get a license tonight. I'll get one
THE LOVE LEGEND 207
the first thing in the morning. And arrange about a
minister."
"I prefer a justice of the peace."
"So do I. No fuss. That's one thing I can't under-
stand. A girl . . ." but Dizzy was not listening.
"What a ride! Say, Mr. Glosser, can't you make
her go any faster. Stir up a little dust."
"Dust thou art, to dust thou shalt return," was Mr.
Glosser's response. About a third of his conversation
consisted of quotations, which were called into being
by nothing more than the use of a word in one of them
by the person with whom he was talking. The color
purple always brought forth the remark, "Aha, purple
and fine linen!"
Glosser having amiably lived nearly four decades,
had acquired a finish, a nicety in affairs of the heart
that enabled him to mingle with the other sex, without
entangling himself inescapably. Though given to gen-
eral elusive sentiments concerning home life, a wife,
children, some one to understand a man, he was not
to be caught.
Ill
They dined at a country club on the outskirts of
the city. Dinner was served in an atmosphere of
music and gayety on a wide veranda. They danced
between bites of celery, and drinks of ginger ale.
When night had fallen and dinner was almost over,
Jim and Dizzy sat watching Ward and Mortimer
Glosser dance. A warm intimacy had developed be-
tween them out of Dizzy's high spirits and Jim's ob-
vious admiration. "Glosser is a wonder," said Jim.
Dizzy liked the way he said it wondah. His accent
208 THE LOVE LEGEND
was almost English. "He's making all kinds of money,
and he's a prince of a chap, too."
"What an ass," thought Dizzy contemptuously.
"Anybody that would think Mortimer Glosser a won-
der!" She looked at him curiously and forgot about
her contempt in admiring his profile. There was some-
thing about his skin, his bright blue eye, flushed with
interest in her that held her attention.
They got up to dance. "I suppose this is the sex
thrill that I'm feeling," said Dizzy to herself. "Hea-
vens I'll have to be careful. Wouldn't it be ridiculous
if I should fall in love with this beautiful bonehead."
She laughed.
"What's funny?"
Her eyes met his. "I was just thinking about our
married life together."
The muscles of his nose and jaw contracted. Again
she was moved.
"We will get married," he said with conviction.
"It's no joke," and pressed her body against his in an
infinitesimal, but breath-taking caress.
IV
They strolled out into the darkness.
"You know you're human," said Jim. "That's the
one thing I was afraid of about you. Mort said that
you were so unapproachable; that you never went out.
I was afraid you would think me an impossible dunce.
Perhaps you do?"
"Of course not," Dizzy found herself saying warmly.
You do think just that, said a voice which she
snubbed with the sensation of removing a needle in the
middle of a phonograph record.
"I'm a dub," went on Jim, "but I certainly admire
THE LOVE LEGEND 209
any one with brains. I think its simply wonderful all
you've done."
Never before had Dizzy had such whole-hearted
adulation. She responded involuntarily.
"You know I'm so happy today because I've just
had an acceptance from Hopkins "
"Oh yes, that fellow they talk about so much. I
must get some of his books and read them."
Dizzy was delighted to think he had heard of Hop-
kins. Perhaps after all she had under-estimated him.
"It's just meant everything to me. It's the thing I've
hoped for so long."
"That's wonderful," he said earnestly. Here was
someone who really cared, Dizzy felt. How could he
care, said the voice feebly, but his whole self threw
out an enveloping cloud of devotion, choking the voice
just as it was starting to jeer at her for revealing her
secret happiness.
The next day she had just turned in her story when
she saw him coming across the local room to her desk.
For a moment she did not know him, but was dis-
tracted by his handsome appearance. "Some one com-
ing to see the stenographer," she thought to herself.
"I wonder why stenographers always know such hea-
venly looking " he stopped by her desk and she
recognized him.
"Thought I'd like to take you out to lunch," he ex-
plained.
"But however did you get hi here? Hardly anyone
can get into this room without a pass and a guide,
and"
210 THE LOVE LEGEND
"Oh they let me in. I go everywhere. It's being
done in our set this season."
"Being done in our set this season" was one of the
phrases he used as murderously as Sari had used "cock-
eyed" in the old days, Dizzy was thinking. She
couldn't waste a second's time on him.
"I'm too busy to go out," she said.
"Gee, that's a shame. I have a whale of a nerve
to come butting in on you this way, though. I hope
you'll excuse me."
He looked so disappointed and hurt and apologetic
that Dizzy said impulsively. "I'll forget about work
and come anyway."
They lunched together in a whirlwind of nonsense,
and when they parted she had promised to go to the
theater with him.
CHAPTER IV
REINED in by the up-raised hand of the policeman
at Van Buren and Michigan streets, the crowds, re-
cently discharged from the entombment of the subur-
ban station, breathed a massive impatience to join the
throngs on the avenue, tessellated, barred, punctuated
with frocks of summer colors.
"Now, Helene, you are not going to fuss about the
skirt," said Mrs. Partridge, as the blue-coated arm
dropped and the crowd moved forward. "It's going,"
emphasis lent her a comic mask, "to be wide enough
for you to step in!"
"There's Dizzy Harris!"
"Helene! Mrs. Partridge! Good afternoon!"
"You're just the very lady I wanted to see," said
Mrs. Partridge on the spur of the moment. "Dear
little Dizzy, I know you're always on the look-out for
news, and I've just been keeping you in mind."
"Thanks," said Dizzy lamely. "You know "
"Now this is what you may print if you want to do
so: Members of the Lakeshore woman's club object
to the card parties that are going on. If the police
were to do their duty these parties would be raided."
She earnestly stopped to glare at Dizzy. Then con-
tinued as if dictating to a stenographer. "Since the
year 1845 it has been positively against the law in the
state of Illinois to indulge in any game of chance for
money. Now I say nothing when the women of my
neighborhood play cards. That's their own business.
211
212 THE LOVE LEGEND
I think it's a bad business, a gambling business, but I
say nothing. When they bring it into my club
a club that is supposed to stand for something in the
community then I object. Then I put myself on
record as being opposed to it "
"That's such a good story I should think your hus-
band would want it," said Dizzy maliciously.
"Of course my husband could put it in for me," said
Mrs. Partridge who had been trying for three days to
persuade him so to humiliate a group of her political
rivals in the club. "But I just thought I'd help you
out."
"It's kind of you," said Dizzy.
"Has Ward heard from any of that old gang lately?
Rod Preston, Bill Wicker?" asked Helene.
"Bill Wicker was married the other day. I believe
Ward got an announcement or something."
"I'm sure I pity the girl," said Mrs. Partridge ab-
sently. "Well I'm afraid you girls get awfully lone-
some without your mother. You must come out and
stay with us for a little touch of the real home atmos-
phere that I know you must be hungry for."
"Yes, come this week end," urged Helene who was
eager to ask about Bill Wicker's marriage.
"Yes, do," said Mrs. Partridge, "I want to hear all
about your mother. . . Now about that club busi-
ness. . ."
"I'll get the details from you when I come out," said
Dizzy. "I'm late for an appointment now. I'll tell
Ward you invited us. . ."
"Yes, I'll call you up tonight," said Helene, as they
parted. She followed her mother who resumed:
"These skirts which show the contour of the figure
are simply indecent. . ."
THE LOVE LEGEND 213
Helene followed her mother's remarks with silent
insulting comments which played a dull accompani-
ment of the patter she spoke, like the suppressed growl
of a caged beast. She was full of a solid, sullen hatred
of her mother. And her heart was crying out that
she had lost Wicker forever.
II
Helene was now almost thirty-three years old. She
had been actively waiting for her mate to come and
get her for half the years she had lived. She believed
in the existence of this man with the constancy of
desperation. If the love legend was false, then in-
deed had she played an unfortunate, witless part.
In the lonely hours of the night her faith in it was
sometimes shaken and she saw herself a spinster
through her own ineptitude.
Sex in all its baldness odiously and implacably oc-
cupied her fearful mind, so averse from unsugared life,
until driven frantic she would shamefully put away
erotic thoughts with the palliating belief that she had
always been so chaste, so pure that some man would
surely desire her. She had long ago ceased to hope
for a prince. Any man would do.
Bill Wicker had been her last hope. He had paid
her some attention the winter before, because he had
chanced to hear that Mrs. Partridge considered him
dangerous. At once amused and flattered, he had
thought it piquant to give a casual subterranean imi-
tation courtship to her daughter.
Until now, though it had been seven months since
she had heard from him, Helene still hoped.
214 THE LOVE LEGEND
III
Ward spent the following week end with Helene.
Dizzy pleaded work and escaped.
At dusk she once more walked the familiar way by
the quiet lake. And Helene demanded the details of
Bill Wicker's marriage.
"Some wealthy girl, I think," said Ward. "Nita
wrote that he wanted Howard to be the best man "
"He married for money!" Helene quickly said.
The thought soothed her sore vanity and fitted with
one of her theories. "You know Mary Field is madly
in love with him. Poor girl. As if he would look at
her. He's paid her almost no attention. Never even
taken her out. He used to ask me about her in the
most satirical way in the days when we used to be so
much together. I used to just die."
They looked across the gray-green and melancholy
expanse of lake in silence. Presently Helene began to
chant:
"Little blind fish, you are marvelous wise.
Little blind fish open up your blind eyes.
Open your ears while I whisper my wish.
Send me a lover . . . Little blind fish."
She uttered the penultimate sentiment in a husky
moving contralto. Ward regarded her earnestness
with amazement. "You act as if you believe you could
get a lover that way."
"It's sort of interesting. I have a pamphlet that
I'll show you. It says you must whisper this ten
times on the sea-shore each evening. And raise your
hands afterward to the evening star and say, "I know
that my lover is coming. I will to have my lover come.
THE LOVE LEGEND 215
Nothing can keep him from me." And then finally
he conies. Perhaps you could get Rod back that way."
"Oh I wouldn't try," said Ward hastily.
"Oh well, neither would I try it seriously," said
Helene, offended. "Heavens! As if I needed a lover.
I've always been too busy keeping them away. Why
there was a certain man with a bad reputation whom
mother wouldn't let me go around with. And he felt
so badly about it that I had to see him regularly. He
used to get sort of desperate because he couldn't come
out, so I used to go through the Art Institute with
him. He had a wonderful appreciation. . ."
She went on and on about Wicker, telling Ward in-
cidents that she already knew under the tissue paper
disguise of "this man," "a certain person." It was
her policy in relating her secrets to withhold names.
"Do you ever think of Rod any more?" asked
Helene.
"I think of him, yes. I have never met anyone that
was as wonderful in every way as he. I've met men
with more money, more brains, even better looking,
but no one that had the understanding, the sympathy,
that Rod has. He had everything."
"I knew a man like that," said Helene dreamily,
thinking of Wicker.
Ward's heart contracted suddenly with the old fear
that she would become like Helene.
IV
Sunday evening as Ward was preparing to leave for
the north side, Dizzy telephoned.
216 THE LOVE LEGEND
"I'm downtown with Jim, and we've just met Morti-
mer Glosser, and a Mr. Chester. Mort wants us to go
for a ride in his car. So bring Helene and meet us
after we've had dinner. We're going hi to dinner now.
Will you come?"
"Yes," said Ward. "One moment until I ask
Helene."
"Why do not the young men call for you?" asked
Mrs. Partridge assuming the comic, pursed-lipped,
spinster aunt characterization of the stage.
"They're all going to dinner," explained Ward.
"And it's so far out here that there wouldn't be much
of the evening left if we waited for them to drive way
out here. It's eight-thirty now."
"A very late unsuitable hour for them to call," said
Mrs. Partridge. "If they had really cared for your
company this evening, they would have arranged for
it sooner."
"You see, I think they only just thought of it now,
when they met my sister," said Ward. "Mort has been
spending the day with a Mr. Chester, a mans I've
often heard him speak of. He and Jim both admire
him very much because he's such a good business man
or something. He's president of the Radium Baking
Soda Company, and interested in half a dozen other
important things."
"He may be married," said Mrs. Partridge. "Did
you ever think of that? Men like nothing better than
to take a young girl out and ruin her reputation. You
can't be too careful."
"I'm sure he's not married," said Ward. "I don't
think that Mortimer Glosser would ask Dizzy and me
to go partying with him if he were."
But Mrs. Partridge's protesting tone was one of
THE LOVE LEGEND 217,
consent. She followed the girls to Helene's room and
advised them to take the first opportunity of letting
the young men know that they weren't in the habit of
meeting men on street corners.
CHAPTER V
THE early summer night had fallen on Michigan
boulevard as the girls came out of the submerged stone
station at Van Buren street, and walked up the almost
deserted cement channel to the avenue.
Mortimer Glosser's car at the curb let out Jim to
welcome them. Dizzy climbed into the front seat be-
side Mortimer, and Jim squatted in the space between.
In back Osbert Chester sat between Ward and Helene.
He was a handsome small featured man, past thirty-
eight with a splash of gray in the hair around his tem-
ples like a dash of talcum powder. He had for both
men and women, a magnetism that was not justified by
either his brains or ability. This witchery, which had
a touch of the woman about it, served him more po-
tently than any art, industry, or good fortune could
have done in business and in love. When he spoke,
men listened. When he repeated a banal anecdote
from vaudeville, men laughed and when he looked at
women, they were stirred with a nebulous longing a
feeling that they had missed the romantic, the poetic
in life. And they would speak crossly to their own
husbands about barbers, tailors why could not all
men look like Oz Chester?
Oz devoted himself to Ward. He talked about
himself, with enough reticence concerning other women
to touch a sense of mystery and wonder in Ward. He
flattered her soundly, warmly, consistently, and with
218
THE LOVE LEGEND 219
that careless flippancy which lends an edge, a finish,
a kick to words of adulation.
At a road house, north of Chicago, they stopped.
On an enclosed terrace down a flight of stairs
people were dancing.
As the music stopped three or four pairs of men
and women came ungracefully up the stairs. A fat
man wheezed up panting like a scrub woman carrying
a bucket of water.
"That's Woodgood! You've heard of him. Wood-
good shoes, with a chain of cheap stores all over the
country?" said Oz to Ward.
"Do you know him?"
"Well, I do, and I don't. You see he married my
wife," he raised his brows humorously.
His wife!
"You've been married?"
"When I was twenty. It lasted three years. Then
she got tired, and married Woodgood."
"That's not . . . that's not your wife with him?"
"Lord no! That's some cutey girl, I imagine. My
former wife is a tall solemn-looking woman now, who
goes in for doing good. She heads movements, and
carries ice to sick babies in the slums or something, I
believe."
Ward did not hear what he said to her for the next
half hour. She was keenly disappointed to think that
this delightful Oz had been married before. At best
then, she could only be second choice, if he had cared
about someone else enough to marry her. Her spirits
were lowered, her life suddenly dulled, she felt almost
sick.
"What's the matter with you, Ward? Come out of
it!"
She looked up to find him gazing steadily at her.
220 THE LOVE LEGEND
She smiled. How dear, and sweet, how kind and
thoughtful he was.
As the evening progressed Ward and Oz became
more and more engrossed in each other. Dizzy and
Jim, too, seemed unconscious that they alone did not
make the entire party. Mortimer Glosser, devoting
himself to Helene was soon ready to leave.
"The party's just begun," said Oz.
"I suppose I ought to go," said Dizzy doubtfully
thinking of her morning's work.
"Nonsense, nonsense," said Oz, and seized the
willing Ward for a dance.
After some talking and arguing, Dizzy and Jim,
Mortimer and Helene rose to leave, but Oz, flushed
and happy after his dance, refused to hear of going
home.
"Ward and I will come later," he insisted exuber-
antly. And Ward, already under his influence, con-
sented.
On the way home in the taxi cab he put his arm
around her and kissed her abruptly.
"Well," he said smiling down at her. "What do you
think of that?"
"It's wonderful," said Ward.
He moved nearer, enclosed her in his arms and
kissed her again and again.
When she reached home, turned the light on to stare
at her happy face, she realized in a second of amazed
uneasiness that he had not proposed to her. Marriage
had not been mentioned.
II
The next morning at eleven he called up and asked
her to meet him downtown and lunch with him.
THE LOVE LEGEND 221
When they had eaten, they walked leisurely among
the hurrying noon crowds.
"It's jolly, isn't it," he smiled. "I almost lost you
that time."
"It's fun!" Ward beamed. "Every one hates us so
for not hurrying too."
"I want to buy you something," said Oz. "Here,
let's go in here. What can I get you? Good heavens,
I've never bought you a present! What can I give
you?"
He pulled her into a jewelry store. Surprised,
pleased, she was unable to protest.
"Do you have a wrist watch? How do you like that
diamond shaped one? Here let's see that, young fel-
low."
He would not heed her protests and bought her a
watch. She accepted, because she found herself un-
able to resist him. He wanted to give it, so boyishly,
so happily.
"I want to buy you something else. What else can
I buy you?"
"Some flowers?" suggested Ward, smiling.
"Oh Lord yes, flowers. Why didn't I think of that
before. You like flowers? I'll leave an order for you
to have some every day. Let's see, there's a good
place up near the Congress."
They found his car and turned up Michigan boule-
vard to buy the flowers. That wouldn't do. These
wouldn't do. Here how about these? All right. Do
you like them, Ward? They were back in the machine,
driving north in the afternoon sunlight. Happy, white-
shod people on the shop-side of the avenue flitted
through their absorption in each other like a pastel
chorus emphasizing a love scene in the background of
a musical show. On the park side there was the gay
222 THE LOVE LEGEND
holiday air of summer. Tourists wandered on the
wide pavements. Motors flew gaily along. From the
lake came a soft breeze, pungent now and then with
the water freshness reminding them of its blue sheen,
off there beyond the park.
They came to the big bridge and looked out over
the harbor, during a pause in the traffic.
"A wonderful day."
"Isn't it?"
Their happiness was as big and shimmeringly color-
ful as the lake, which shone fully revealed off to
their right. They were unconscious of the docks be-
side the river, below and behind them.
"You know I like this old town," said Oz in a
burst of enthusiasm.
"I, too, I love it. Especially the lake!"
"Yes, I can't see a town that isn't built on water.
Then there's something about Chicago. In summer
you can find so many attractive places to have a good
time in. Clubs, drives, and hotels, wonderful summer
hotels on the lake."
They sped down Michigan Avenue, part of the
swiftly changing auto parade on the wide smooth
street. Oak street, a curving yellow mat, stuck with
humans in bathing suits, like flies on gummed paper.
"Oh, we must go swimming some day!"
"Oh, we must!"
And so on. Sitting close, two organisms running
smoothly in harmony with each other, throbbing rhyth-
mically like the perfect engine beneath them that car-
ried them forward on and on. Happy to exchange the
obvidus reactions each felt to the summer day. Living
in the contact of their eyes.
Sheridan Road.
THE LOVE LEGEND 223
"Here's the kind of house for us, when we're mar-
ried," said Oz.
Married. Oh are we going to get married? The
question rose to Ward's lips, but she didn't say it.
Her face said it, and Oz exclaimed bending over her:
"Ward, you're a wild rose, that's what you are. I
didn't know there was anything like you in the world."
The motor hummed. They flew on, past the stroll-
ers, past the bathers, past the tennis players, past
everybody until they were alone in a hot sweet world,
drinking in the cup of warm honey that a kind, amaz-
ing fate had put to their lips.
Ill
After tea they parted reluctantly. Oz had a busi-
ness engagement for dinner. He began regretting it at
four, and complained constantly for three hours, be-
fore he left her. "I'll get rid of him as soon as pos-
sible and call you up," he said as he left her door.
She sat beside the telephone from eight until ten.
When he rang he was already in the lobby of the
hotel.
"I'm downstairs: come on out for a walk."
They strolled slowly through the caressing summer
night, gala with automobiles which seemed to be en-
tities in themselves, huge iron animals on their way
to a party. Popcorn wagons sang on street corners.
Girls giggled loudly at passing boys. And into the
park men and women were walking two and two. har-
moniously, steadily, like the animals going into the
ark.
Ward and Oz joined this procession of the saved.
They, too, were rescued from damnation since they
had found each other.
224 THE LOVE LEGEND
He kissed her again and again, while she happily
gave him her lips.
"I wish I wouldn't kiss you like this Ward, but I
can't help it."
How horrid! Why did he wish that? How
strained his voice was!
"I certainly am crazy about you," he said, and
kissed her again. She clung to him, trying with her
whole body to take the wish out of him that he had
expressed.
"I wish I could stop kissing you!"
Why? Ward, silently hurt, did not move in his
arms.
"We must go back," said Oz. "It's getting late.
We shouldn't have come out."
"It's only about eleven."
"Ward, you child! You precious babyl"
He strained her in his arms. Ward trembled. "Per-
haps we should go in."
He pushed her away resolutely. "Yes, we should."
This sudden business-like tone interrupted the music
of the night for Ward like a xylophone chiming in
with a violin solo.
It was a sin against the young love that stirred her.
She allowed him to lead her home, slightly piqued.
In bed, she lay awake, alternating blissful remem-
brance with those apprehensions about the princeliness
of Oz, which she felt when he told her he had been
married and divorced.
IV
Oz left her to call upon a woman who had insisted
upon seeing him that night, a Mrs. Marchrose, with
whom he had been on intimate terms for a number
of years.
CHAPTER VI
JANET MILLWRIGHT, whose conversation was a col-
lectanea, fascinated Dizzy. Janet memorized whole
passages from books and delivered them in a pro-
found manner. Her literary patter was limitless.
She was incapable of sane consecutive thought. Dizzy
did not discover this.
Janet was in love with Raleigh Minster, who was a
labor agitator. He had become a sort of drawing-
room strike fomenter. He lectured before women's
clubs, causing angular members to rise from an audi-
ence, like wrathful towers appearing over a horizon,
and argue such questions as "What is one hundred
percent Americanism?"
Very often on pleasant afternoons Janet and Dizzy
would tramp along Michigan avenue, staring into shop
windows making outrageous hilarious remarks about
what they saw, buying each other imaginary ward-
robes and earnestly discussing love, sex, capitalism,
art, the stage and Raleigh Minster.
Janet was making up her mind to go and live with
the young radical. Marriage was outside his code, and,
since ^he had met him, outside hers.
II
Dizzy sat at her desk in the Times office writing.
It was just past the time when the reporters' stories
for the home edition had to be in, and not yet press
225
226 THE LOVE LEGEND
time. So nearly the whole staff lounged idly in the
local room waiting for twelve-thirty when they would
be released for luncheon.
Dizzy had an ambition to learn the touch system
of typewriting and so she let her gaze wander idly
about the room and wrote anything that came into her
head:
"Jim Stein, notable of the office, lounges over the
desk of Beverly Jackson, who is said to be a poet, and
who has gained much local fame among the pseudo
highbrows, as a defender of the laboring man who
frets out his days in the sweatshops of the republic,
and whose only playground is the tenement roof. Boo-
hoo, weep the sentimental over it, but not Bev. Bev
only writes stuff to cause the sentimental to boo-hoo.
"Jim Stein understands it. Jim Stein understands
everything that has to do with moods, and class con-
ditions and learning and literature. The reason he
understands so much is because he has never been to
school. He learned philosophy out of yellow lecture
pamphlets for sale at street corner book shops where
second hand books bulged out over the counter.
"The rest of the office are low brow. They delight
in standing about and cracking jokes. They pull each
other's legs, and trip each other up. They love to put
coins down on the table, and see who is able to glean
the harvest by having heads when all the rest have
tails. They love to express their willingness to bet
fifty dollars that John Michael O'Malley, or Patrick
Flanagan will be the first president of Palestine, or
that the latest archbishop to be appointed is a secret
dope fiend. They know all sorts of strange things
that no one else in the world. . ."
"Ooh, have you heard the news?" Jim Stein, eye-
brows raised deprecatingly, lids drooping, made a half
THE LOVE LEGEND 227
gesture from his elbow. He drew out "ooh" in a long
sigh, more expressive than another man's "God!"
"Petie Burns is back from New York."
"Oh is he? Did he see Hopkins?"
"I haven't seen him yet. But I'm waiting to see
his face when he hears the news about Pearl."
"What news?"
"Pearl and Jones got married last night."
"Jones?"
"The long slim pallid bird with the gold teeth on
the copy desk, you know him. The guy with some
bilious trouble and big ears, like wings that look as if
he's going to flap them and fly away to heaven. Pearl
says, he's her ideal man, and Georgie Cotton is weep-
ing down in the wash room, and telling everybody
that will listen how he put his head on her lap one
night and she said, 'Georgie you appeal to the ma-
ternal instinct in me so, and it's simply wonderful!'
Harold Smith has gone home to his wife, ill about it.
Here she was respectably married last night, and not
one of the three had a chance to seduce her. And
she learned how to be awful lit'ry from 'em and
married some one else."
Georgie Cotton, who spent his leisure hours patron-
izing the denizens of Lake Forest because they were
not literary, and his business hours patronizing the
staff of the Times because they were not mentioned
in the social register, now came toward them in his
amiable and knock-kneed manner.
"Well Dizzy, Petie's back from New York. Won-
der if he saw Hopkins. I told him to put in a good
word with Hopkins for you."
Dizzy looked scornful.
"You know I discovered this little gal," went on
Georgie, "I used to think she was just an ordinary
228 THE LOVE LEGEND
flapper from the U., but, darn it, she's got brains.
Course you know, Dizzy, I don't think you ought to be
down in this office working. It's no place for you.
You're too ... well, too darn lyrical to be wasted on
a newspaper office."
Dizzy looked more scornful, and would have said
something had not Petie Burns, dapper, petite, hand-
some as a shoe clerk bowed himself into the local room
like a star making his first appearance.
"I wanta see Dizzy. Got something to tell Dizzy!"
Jim Stein and Georgie Cotton crowded him eagerly
as he addressed himself to Dizzy.
"Yeah. Hot, dusty trip. New York's hot as hell.
Yeah, say listen Dizzy Harris, say I can't stay a
minute I gotta tell Dizzy something. Say, I pulled off
the best thing of my young career on those gay birds
in New York.
Dizzy was eagerly attentive.
"Hopkins was a prince. He showed me a wonderful
time. Well, the last night he took me out to dinner,
'By the way, Burns,' he said to me. 'By the way
and say, Jim I showed Gotz that play you wrote and
he thought it was a riot Hopkins says to me, 'who's
this boy Harris that's sending stuff to me from your
office. He's sending me some mighty good stuff! ' '
"No," said Dizzy, beside herself with joy. "Did
he say that?"
"Yeah, well, I let him rave for a while, just sitting
back and saying nothing, and then " he showed his
even white teeth at the recollection "finally there
was a silence. I waited for it, cause I knew I had a
good one to spring. So I said, 'This chap Harris is
just about the cutest little flapper of a girl reporter
that ever worked on the old sheet!' Yeah!"
Dizzy uttered a little cry, drowned out by Georgie
THE LOVE LEGEND 229
Cotton slapping himself, country fashion, and Jim
Stein uttering a long "ooh!"
"It was wonderful," went on Burns. "It knocked
Hopkins out of his seat. He thinks he's such a wise
owl. Nobody can ever fool him. That's what he
thinks. And then being made to look silly by a little
girl like Dizzy. Gee, I rubbed it in. I told him all
about your beaux, and how I had seen you around
town with Mort Glosser and Oz Chester. I give you
my word that he just sat there with his mouth open for
half an hour straight. . ."
As he recapitulated his triumph, Dizzy's eyes
opened wide, and the lower muscles of her face
twitched. Georgie and Jim, eager to relate the story
of Pearl's marriage, closed the conversation over her
head. She stumbled out of the room that the boys
might not see that she was crying.
CHAPTER VII
WHEN work was done she put on her hat and wan-
dered over into the park. The great romance that
Dizzy had always cherished was killed by the revela-
tion that Petie had made to Hopkins. She had wanted
to be E. W. Harris, one of the younger writing men
of America. She hated women writers with the excep-
tion of one or two, conceiving them to be like her
mother, sending messages, having missions. It was
unbearable to think of being classed among them, by
a man like Hopkins.
Not only that. She had appeared before Hopkins in
the character of a flapper who spent her time running
about from club to restaurant, from dance to dinner
party. She, Dizzy Harris, was being thought a friv-
olous little butterfly girl by the great Hopkins, the
only man on the continent whose critical opinion mat-
tered a jot to her. And she had meant to make him
accept her as the peer of any American writer. She
had meant to match her brains and energy with the
best minds in the country behind the masculine E. W.
Harris. And now Petie Burns for the sake of making
a clever remark at a dinner party had stopped this
plan forever. She felt as if she could never write
another line. The humiliation seemed to sear deeper
and deeper as she remembered Petie's description of
her as the cutest little flapper of a girl reporter in the
city.
A feeling of fathomless disgust with life, with her i
230
THE LOVE LEGEND 231
ambitions, overcame her, and she sank down on a
cold stone bench, mindless of the fact that it chilled
her. Her hopes, how tawdry, her ambitions, how
cheap! After all what did it matter, what did any-
thing matter? What a fool she was to think she could
escape from her sex.
It was in this mood that Jim Howells found her. As
she saw him approaching it seemed to her that here
was a fresh channel for her mind to wander in. In
him, she could forget all her past life, which at that
moment seemed spoiled, useless and begin all over
again as a different Dizzy Harris, as clear and beauti-
ful as an admired person, newly met.
"Well, how are you this evening!" She had long
since ceased to notice his banalities. "You look
tired!"
"I am tired," she said, drinking hi his sympathy as
she had never done with anyone before. "I am dis-
couraged, sick, and a dreadful thing has happened."
He was immediately concerned, interested. But
when she had told him the cause of her grief, it
puzzled him.
"Why should you care? This Hopkins will prob-
ably think you're even more clever when he finds out
you're a woman."
"That's the horrible part of it. Don't you see?
I don't want to be just clever. From now on, how can
he ever take my work seriously. The sort of thing I
do would be all right coming from a man, but from
a woman, a cute little flapper it would be simply
ridiculous, at best only imitative in a clever way.
Can't you see how Hopkins will regard anything I
send now?"
"No, I can't," said Jim. "If he is as great as you
think he is he'll simply judge what you write on its
232 THE LOVE LEGEND
merits and won't care a hang whether you're a man,
woman or child that's the way I look at it."
"Oh Jim, I feel as if I can't write another line. I
never want to see a typewriter again. My whole life
seems so hopeless, so senseless."
Jim clasped her hand.
"Forget about it, and marry me, can't you?"
Dizzy looked at him. She saw in his tensed body,
his worried face, his anxious eyes that he meant it.
There was a long strained silence while they looked at
each other.
"You mean you really care about me?" Dizzy asked.
"I guess I've made that plain enough, haven't I ! "
Still they both sat in paralyzed silence, stupidly
staring. All at once they kissed, began to talk in-
coherently, brokenly. Both were radiantly, shiningly
happy.
"I guess I'm hungry," said Dizzy suddenly.
"Haven't you had your dinner?" he wanted to know
anxiously.
"No!"
"Poor child. Well, we'll have to go and hang on
the feed bag."
They went off joyously, arm in arm together.
CHAPTER VIII
MENTALLY inexpensive! Mentally inexpensive!
It was a phrase that went over and over in Dizzy's
mind, idiotically, annoyingly. It first wanted to thrust
itself into a story Dizzy was writing a few moments
before the deadline, and when she rejected it, it
bobbed up again and again. Silly, pseudo-clever kind
of thing, Dizzy thought scornfully. But it wouldn't
go away.
She met Jim for luncheon afterwards. They sat
opposite each other, smiling and absorbed, at a table
the size of a ouija board, crowded like checkers in a
box among similar tables in the Hotel La Salle Dutch
Room.
"I suppose you spent a very busy morning?" said
Jim, pushing the large menu away definitely, as he fin-
ished ordering. This was his inevitable conversational
opening. Dizzy, taking pleasure in the way the words
formed themselves on his lips, mysteriously different
from the same trite phrases in anyone else's mouth,
was unconscious of almost everything but the delicate
gold and rose haze in which they were both living.
The flush in his cheek, the bright sweet tender look
in his eyes, the set of his head, his hand on the table,
slim fingered, sensitive, altogether a magnetic kind of
hand; these were realities to Dizzy. An inanely con-
ventional conversation took place between them until
Jim turned with a more personal interest into some-
thing, very dull to Dizzy, about the profits that his
233
234 THE LOVE LEGEND
firm had made during the preceding year. He took a
paper from his pocket and read her some figures.
"Of course I wouldn't want you to mention any of
this," he said apologetically, as if he knew it was un-
necessary to tell her this.
Dizzy's dream fabric was ripped with an ugly gash.
She realized that he was confiding business secrets in
her, expecting her to be interested, thrilled with the
glamour of big business, and moreover to excite her-
self over the possibility of his own commercial success,
thought as their eyes met, and he said, boyishly,
But her curtain of happiness closed quickly over the
abruptly, "Tell me, Dizzy, when shall it be?"
"Oh Jim, a long time, I think. . . And yet it's silly
to wait. I don't know. It's such a new idea to me.
I haven't told anyone, yet. Not even Ward. And I
want to tell her. And then mother must be told, too.
I'm rather dreading having people know about it. It's
all so warm and safe bottled up between us two. I'm
afraid it will disappear in thin air, like some precious
perfume, if its diffused among a lot of people."
"It won't disappear unless you change your mind.
You know Dizzy, I can't realize it. I can't believe it.
Every time I see you, I think she's going to tell me
she's changed her mind. She doesn't really mean it.
It's all a dream and she's bound to wake up soon to
what a duffer I am."
"I don't change my mind very easily. By the way,
Jim I'm going to take you over to the Custard Pie
Club tonight to meet my sister Sari. You know, I've
told you, she lives in the place. . ."
"I'd like to go to that Custard Pie Club, I've heard
so much about it. I thought it was pretty wild."
"Not really. Some of the pseudo-Bohesimians who
hang around talk wildly, but it's not really so very
bad.
THE LOVE LEGEND 235
II
Sari was not in when Dizzy and Jim opened the
door of the club that night. There was no meeting but
a group lounged in one corner talking about establish-
ing a little theater in the hall upstairs.
A wall-eyed artist stretched at full length on a
bench was speaking, "Youse birds is gotta be free if
youse want to elevate the drama here. The trouble
with all these here little the-ayters is that they've had
some wealthy boy backing them, and he wants to run
the whole push. See?"
"Hello, Dizzy," called Texas Flynn. "Say we're
going to start the swellest little the-ayter upstairs you
ever seen. You can write a story about it if you want
to. Sari is going to act, and I've got the swellest
director Pat Scovall."
"Big stuff," said a little blond Jewess whose enor-
mous hazel eyes had never left Tex's face. She was
very popular with the Custard Pies because it was her
invariable remark uttered in heart-felt tones.
Dizzy and Jim took seats while Tex went on to ex-
plain the idea. They had the hall there, and the
director, and they could get actors. They would be
independent of patronage. Original plays were to be
given as the Drama workshop had done; they would
surpass the Maurice Browne company in putting on
new and untried plays.
The entrance of Pat Scovell was the signal for a
quarrel to begin between him and a girl with promi-
nent teeth and adenoids who wanted to do Strind-
berg's "Miss Julie."
"Say, Tex, I've got a swell play on the Irish free-
dom. It'll knock 'em out of their seats "
236 THE LOVE LEGEND
"Play!" said the girl with the adenoids contemp-
tuously. "Rant, you mean. An old mother sitting in
her cottage whining about Irish independence, and
they bring in one son after another, dead. It's impos-
sible. I couldn't do it. We ought to open with some-
thing dramatic like 'Julie.' I know I could do 'Julie'
and it's never been done here "
"Now listen here, Baby honey," said Pat, giving her
a few paws on the shoulder. "Julie is too hard to
start with. There's nobody could take that man's
part. Nobody but me that we could get that would be
able to do it."
"You learn it, Pat," urged the girl. "It would be
splendid. Oh, I think it would be a wonderful "
Tex Flynn came over and began talking confiden-
tially to Dizzy.
"Say, this is going to be great stuff, do you know it?
Sherwood Anderson's writing a play about me. Say
it's going to be the swellest thing you ever seen." He
grinned. "You see, the curtain goes up, and there I
am sitting, paintin'. See." He grinned and sucked in
again, as he turned and decorated the air with an
imaginary brush. Jim regarded him with a disgust
that was ready to take Jim out of his own conventional
armor if the man approached any nearer to Dizzy.
"I'm paintin' a house. There I sit, on a board, and
the curtain goes up "
The entrance of Janet Millwright and Raleigh
Minster turned his attention fortunately, and Jim
who had been sitting like a wary watch dog in a cor-
ner, relaxed a little, took a deep breath and showed his
discomfort only by a tightening of the muscles of his
nostrils.
"Say, Jan, we're going to open with Miss Julie, isn't
it splendid?"
THE LOVE LEGEND 237
Janet came in looking unusually beautiful. Her love-
liness was always evanescent, like a stream of pale
lavender, revealed unexpectedly in a puff of gray
smoke. Raleigh just behind her looked exalted and
spiritual. Their love affair was at its apex.
Pat Scovell came over and privately explained to
Dizzy that he was going to put on a swell Irish play
while the girl with the adenoids proclaimed her inten-
tion of doing Miss Julie.
Dizzy looked up to see Cecil standing wistfully in
the doorway.
"Oh, I thought you'd gone out," exclaimed Dizzy.
She crossed the room with Jim and introduced them.
"Sari's out walking. I guess she'll be back pretty
soon. Do you want to see the babies?"
They went upstairs. The baby was asleep, but
Tyn-tin, sitting up in his little bed, smiled a sudden,
unexpected message of welcome at Dizzy and held out
his arms to her. An irresistible gesture that swept
Dizzy off her feet in a little gust of admiration and
love. She was living emotion for the first time in her
life. Jim looked on benevolently, approvingly. He
smoked a cigarette with Cecil and exchanged one or
two commonplace ideas. In general, he thought Jews
ill-mannered tricksters, but he had accepted Cecil un-
questioningly as being one of the much talked of "ex-
ceptions" on account of his relationship to Dizzy. He
and Cecil struck up a real liking for each other. Fun-
damentally they were the same sort, loyal, sincere,
and loving.
Sari came upstairs rushingly. She was exuberant,
eager to tell Cecil the details of a flirtatious walk she
had been taking with one of the more passionless,
esthetic Custard Pies. Jim admired her looks, her
238 THE LOVE LEGEND
piquancy, her slight resemblance to Dizzy, and if he
disapproved of her menage he did not show it in any
way.
"Come on downstairs, Janet has written a poem and
she is going to read it out loud. Her poems are always
fun," said Sari, and precipitously led the way down-
stairs again. Cecil patiently went back to Tin-tin who
howled as the company filed out
III
Janet had already taken a commanding position and
was about to begin as they came into the room.
Pat and the girl with the adenoids still argued in
low passionate tones over the first play in which she
was to act. Raleigh's eyes were fixed on Janet with
intensity, his cheeks were red and his eyes brilliant.
"There were three Jews who kissed me.
I love one of them.
He was my big love as one speaks of big loves.
He was also a whale of a Jew.
He introduced me to the Jews of his set.
In the deep swells of the red-blood sea of Jewishness
Buffeted between deep-bosomed women, and stringy wild-haired
me,
I was lost.
There were three Jews who kissed me.
I loved one of them."
Jim prepared to laugh amiably at this, though he
didn't really think it was very funny, when he saw that
the others were all nodding and discussing it seriously.
This, then was literature.
"Big stuff," said the blond Jewess earnestly.
"Say I like that, Jan," Raleigh Minster told her.
Janet came over and sat down in a chair opposite
THE LOVE LEGEND 239
Jim and Dizzy. "I'm glad to see you, Dizzy.
You haven't been around for an age. What have you
been doing with yourself." Dizzy answered at ran-
dom, and presented Jim, who looked so much like what
he was that Janet hardly acknowledged the introduc-
tion, and paid no more attention to him in her conver-
sation with Dizzy than if he hadn't been present. He
sat silent, watching Dizzy, a line growing and deepen-
ing between his brows. He was trying honestly to
think it out think out what it was that Dizzy could
find in these people. A kind of vacancy grew behind
his eyes as his thoughts bumped up against first one
of the notions by which he lived and regulated his
conduct and then another.
"You know we've been living in just one room, but
it was awful, and so now we've taken a place over on
Dearborn, and I'm going to get the meals. You know
I've given up school, and I'm helping Raleigh as much
as I can. I go down to his office every day. And I
feel that his work is of so much real importance. . ."
She must be married to that chap, then, thought
Jim. Wonder what business he is in? He didn't ap-
prove of women working in general but there were
exceptional cases, and he liked the interest she took
in her husband's work.
". . . it all goes so slow. But Dizzy, the revolution
is coming." She leaned forward and clasped Dizzy's
arm enthusiastically. Jim wondered what she meant
by the revolution, and why she should be so glad about
it. "Raleigh was saying today that the workers are
all coming to realize that they never will get anything
by the ballot. The ballot! The ballot! That's all
you used to hear. But people are beginning to realize.
As if we never did anything but sit around to wait for
the next election. Agitate, and keep on agitating.
240 THE LOVE LEGEND
That's where Raleigh is so wonderful, and where I
have been able to help him a little bit."
Dizzy compressed her lips and nodded.
"Yes, it's only by fighting that you will get any-
where."
"What do you mean?" Jim broke into the conver-
sation.
"Strike, for one thing," said Dizzy. "Agitate, fight,
strike until unjust laws are changed."
"Don't you believe that any just cause can be settled
by the ballot? Don't you believe in the will of the
people?"
"Oh, the people. They don't have a chance in an
election. Surely you understand that. How did the
eight hour day come about? Votes? No! The men
threatened to strike, struck. And then the politicians
passed the law."
Jim settled back, the puzzlement deepening behind
his eyes. He couldn't make Dizzy out.
Surely she didn't believe in strikes! He took no
more part in the conversation, though several of
Janet's remarks were unbelievably different from the
set of ideas he had thought were held by all people that
were not definitely vicious.
When he told Janet goodby he addressed her as
Mrs. Minster, as Raleigh's name had been impressed
on his mind.
She colored and corrected him. Dizzy rather halt-
ingly explained to Jim on their way out through the
alley that Janet and Raleigh didn't believe in mar-
riage. This sort of thing had a general head in Jim's
mind. It came under the classification of "Rotten-
ness."
THE LOVE LEGEND 241
IV
But he turned once again to the subject of strikes
as they walked slowly home.
"What made you say all those things, anyway," he
began playfully. "Just to tease me, because you knew
I held the opposite views."
This attitude aroused all the original normal Dizzy
scorn.
"Certainly not. I was perfectly sincere in every-
thing I said."
"But all that rot about the people not being able to
get what they want by voting. Why that's the prin-
ciple our forefathers fought for. It's what Abraham
Lincoln meant when he said that the government of
the people by the people and for the people could
never perish from the earth."
"Your quotation is inaccurate," said Dizzy. "But
I know what you mean. You mean that you think
we are living under a democracy."
"Why!" Jim was astounded. "A democracy!
Why don't you believe it?" He is unusually naive,
even for a capitalist, Dizzy was thinking.
"Of course not."
"Do you mean to tell me that you think that the
United States isn't a democratic nation, that we aren't
all born free and equal."
"Am I the equal of Pierpont Morgan's daughter?
Is the prostitute whom I am liable to be sent down to
interview in the Morals court tomorrow morning the
equal of the wife of the Mayor?"
Jim winced at the word prostitute on Dizzy's lips.
It was the first outburst he had ever heard from her.
242 THE LOVE LEGEND
"Yes, politically."
"Then why are laws that will benefit the smalt
oligarchy of capitalists always passed, while the plain
people trot around like trained dogs at a circus, re-
sponding to the whip of a ring master?"
"Because the ordinary people aren't intelligent
enough to get up and become ring masters them-
selves. Nothing holds them back but their own
selves. I'm not a capitalist, but if I'm not one
some day it will be because I'm not smart enough to
go ahead. That's what democracy means. That I'm
a free born man, free to vote, free to make my way
in the world, free to get to the top if I'm smart
enough."
"Yes, you can get to the top on a ladder made of
bodies of the people who aren't smart enough," said
Dizzy bitterly. "If the plain people are too stupid
to discover their own interests, it is because they are
deliberately mis-instructed by the capitalists; if they
were educated and had an equal chance, perhaps the
difference wouldn't show so much. Still I don't know.
Here, you are, a slave of the capitalist system, exult-
ing in your bonds. You have been through the train-
ing schools of the capitalist system, which have cun-
ningly made you believe that perhaps you will be one
of the chosen ones to go up higher. What is the actual
percent of the people who do get to the top? They
don't all get there you'll admit. Democracy! Why
don't you see that a combat in the United States on
any question never takes the people into consideration
at all. They are the goats, the ones who get what is
left, when two wings of the capitalist party split."
Jim bent his head, frowned and concentrated on the
enigma of Dizzy's point of view.
"You mean in an election or when some issue like
THE LOVE LEGEND 243
the league of nations or prohibition is at stake that
the people aren't the real judges?"
"Do you think they are?"
"Well, I think their vote is the final determining
factor."
Dizzy laughed. "They play exactly the same part
as they played in the war. They give themselves un-
sparingly to a struggle that does not concern them,
enlisted and deceived by the actual contestants who
remain in a place of safety and enjoy the spoils."
It was too much for Jim. He seized her arm, and
said banteringly, "Your little head is just full of ideas,
isn't it? Where do you get them all?"
Dizzy walked forward consumed with a more furi-
ous anger than she had ever felt in her life.
"It's your sort. The stupid, brainless dupes of the
capitalist system who really hold society back today.
The capitalists themselves could never do it if they
didn't have thousands of young lieutenants like you,
eager and hopeful of the spoils."
Jim good-humoredly accepted this. "I believe you're
a little bit peeved. What's the difference, anyway?
I'm a dub. I admit it, but there are some things that
a chap knows. He just knows those things. I'm not
half as smart as you are. If I were, I'd be a million-
aire. But let's not let it make a difference between us.
You don't mind being teased, do you?"
"I do mind being patronized. And your attitude is
very patronizing."
"No. You're mistaken. I'd have a whale of a
nerve to try to patronize you. I wouldn't even at-
tempt it. I'm only afraid now that you're angry with
me, and that you think you've made a huge mistake."
He was so earnest and sincere and lovable that
Dizzy's anger melted.
244 THE LOVE LEGEND
After all the atmosphere was still light with the
radiance of new love. They walked on together enjoy-
ing the motion of their bodies harmoniously moving
arm in arm.
But the arguments came up again and again. Jim
didn't want Dizzy to go near the Custard Pie club.
He had been greatly shocked at Janet. She was unfit
to associate with Dizzy. And it happened he had
read a play they were opening with. He became in-
articulate in attempting to describe it to Dizzy.
"Why, do you know what it's about. It's about a
girl who is so well, I wouldn't like to say what she is,
but the situation is so rotten that, I don't know what."
"Oh don't be silly," said Dizzy. "I've read 'Co-
caine.' Janet's rehearsing it."
"And you think it's all right?" His tone was
fatherly, patronizing, securely righteous.
"Now, look here, that play may not be about the
pleasantest things in the world "
"Pleasantest in the world? I can't believe you've
read it. Why, in that play there's a girl that " he
seemed about to rise to a great climax, his face lit up
with denunciation, but he fell back weakly on, "well,
really, I'd be ashamed to tell you."
This attitude bored Dizzy. "I certainly have read
the play. It's about a prostitute who is supporting a
dope fiend "
"Yes," said Jim hastily. "And you think that's
all right, do you?"
"Oh all right or all wrong! That isn't the point.
I certainly do not object to the material."
THE LOVE LEGEND 245
VI
And so they quarreled. But their worst disagree-
ments were always on capital and labor.
Jim always contended that the people of real ability
and value dominated the country, and always would.
Dizzy became more and more bitter, more and more
determined to convert him to her point of view, which
was that the people of real ability were kept down by
an imitation aristocracy which had held dominion ever
since property had been the determining factor of the
ranks of men.
Neither of them were very happy those days. Jim
could be seen walking home from work at night, his
hat pushed back on his forehead, in his eyes, a puzzled
bewildered, intent look. He digested none of Dizzy's
ideas. Here, they collided with a notion about love,
there with an idea about duty, morality, or patriotism.
His ideas were so neatly and statistically arranged
that new ones simply must be emitted or else cause
acute discomfort. And the line between his brow
would grow deeper and deeper as he thought about
it. Over and over, the same old ground, he traveled
again and again.
There was Glosser, a capitalist, and not such a bad
fellow. He sprang this on Dizzy triumphantly, one
afternoon as they walked in Lincoln Park.
"Oh it's not one individual, or group of individuals.
Why can't you understand that it's the system that I
think is all wrong. The capitalists themselves are just
as much victims of it as the industrial slaves are.
Don't you see? Politicians, idealists, reformers razzle
and tittilate the capitalists until they think, honestly
enough, that they are the saviors of society, that they
govern by divine right benevolent despots."
246 THE LOVE LEGEND
"But look here, if you threw out all the property
owners, and put the people in power you'd have what
you have in Russia."
"Certainly. A soviet, perhaps."
"With a lot of rotten people like that Minster in
control; the women of the country would be in a nice
fix, wouldn't they?"
"That's nonsense. The notion that women would
be treated in an unfair way under a socialistic gov-
ernment is propaganda, capitalists' propaganda, pure
and simple."
"You believe in all these things that the Bolsheviki
are doing, do you?" He spoke as if he were giving
her one more chance to redeem herself.
"I suppose you speak in that tone because you think
I ought to disapprove of such things as children being
held in common. I don't. I think the notion that
any ignorant girl just because she happens by a physi-
cal accident to become a mother is capable of the
enormous responsibility of training and educating a
human being, is simply sentimental rot. The great
thing about the Russian government today is that they
aren't soft over there. Plato said in his 'Republic'
that the first act of a wise government would be to
send out into the country all the inhabitants of the
city who were more than ten years old. Children
would then be unaffected by the habits, the mistakes
of their parents."
Jim was shocked deeply. What she had said about
motherhood revolted him essentially. He looked at
her searchingly, almost heart-broken. Her profile,
staring straight ahead, was so pure, so fine, so
thoroughly the ideal profile, that he couldn't believe
it. He had to reject everything Dizzy was saying.
"You're just a child," he said tenderly. "Just a
THE LOVE LEGEND 247
baby, after all. You don't know. You'll get over it."
Dizzy turned and looked at him, shaken with scorn,
wild with anger. His immaculate grooming struck her
afresh in the afternoon sunlight. It was childish of
her to care so much about his appearance. Yet how
beautiful he was, so clean, so young, so fresh, and
that eastern accent!
She could have screamed at the irony of it. That
she, Dizzy Harris should have fallen in love with an
accent!
"All things considered it would be idiotic for us to
continue," she said swiftly. "Our ideas being so ut-
terly opposed, love must degenerate into a third rate
farce between us. I am afraid we cannot even remain
friends. Youth must find friendship in the cause it
serves!"
She turned and walked off swiftly.
"Dizzy, Dizzy!"
She walked on.
CHAPTER IX
I
"Miss ELIZABETH HARRIS, sign here."
"Here's a special for you Dizzy."
Dizzy took Jim's letter, glanced at the envelope
with compressed lips, pain-ridden eyes. She crossed
the room to the desk, enclosed the unopened letter in
an envelope and directed it to Mr. James Peabody
Howells.
The telephone rang.
"It's Jim," said Ward.
"Say I'm not in," said Dizzy.
"But Dizzy."
"Say it," commanded Dizzy.
"She isn't in. You'd better call up later."
"He wants to know when you'll be in."
"Say you don't know."
"But Dizzy "
After the telephone call there was a silence. Ward
looked at her sister intently. Dizzy pretended to read.
Suddenly Ward saw that Dizzy's eyes were full of
tears. "Dizzy, dear!" Her arms went around Dizzy.
"Tell me what's wrong."
"Ward, Ward, Ward!" She sobbed for a few mo-
ments, left the room, and came back apparently re-
covered. . . .
"I'm going to New York."
"Oh Dizzy. And what about Jim?"
"It's all off Ward. I am going to forget him. My
248
THE LOVE LEGEND 249
book, I'm going to write like mad. And take it to
New York."
"Oh Dizzy. It's just a lover's quarrel. Make
it up."
Dizzy turned savagely.
"Don't speak to me of it again. It's all over."
Ward's eyes filled with tears. "Excuse me, Dizzy I
didn't mean to intrude. But I like Jim so much, and
I regret so much my own rashness at twenty. It's
been four years now and I haven't forgotten. And
Jim is so perfect, you'll never meet another man like
him."
"He is dear," said Dizzy, "isn't he dear? You can't
blame me for caring about him, can you? He is
sweet, isn't he? I mean fine all through, and somehow
lovable in spite of. . . ."
"In spite of what?"
"Of everything. It's impossible Ward. Wild.
Can't you see? Oh, you with your intuitions, and your
fine sense of the fitness of things, can't you see? It's
the most hilarious joke that fate could play on me, I
think making me fall in love with a Boston accent
and a suit of clothes."
"You know it's not that. It's Jim you love. Dear,
sweet Jim. I can just see his blue eyes looking after
you, loving you, admiring you. Dizzy, you don't
realize how lucky you are. What you're throwing
away."
"Don't think that. I realize it all better than
you. I realize that it's love, young love, I'm giving
up ... after a fashion. Don't think I don't feel it.
Don't think I'm not haunted by Jim's presence all the
time. Don't think but what's the use? It isn't
enough for me. I must have a man that I can admire
250 THE LOVE LEGEND
and respect. I want my lover to be to me what father
was to my childhood."
"Like the prince of the fairy tale?"
"No, no, no," said Dizzy violently. "That's the
trouble with the damn idiot. He's too much what
mother would approve. He's the protagonist of that
old story. With nothing more to recommend him
but his damn fool hundred per cent American smile."
"Oh Dizzy. When he's such a dear. Just the sort
any girl could be proud of!"
"He's moulded, stamped after a pattern. There
are millions like him all over the country, all thinking
the same silly little thoughts that have been drilled
into them by half-witted college professors. I wish I
had joined a club at college and gone around more
with men of that type. It might have rendered me
immune. I wonder. You see, I've never dabbled with
thoughts of love, because I was too sophisticatedly
disdainful of romancing females. Still I think not. It
was Jim, I cared for, the true person underneath
everything. You know Ward, there's something there,
in Jim. Something underneath his looks and his
clothes, and his Boston accent, and even under his
stupidity I don't know what it is. But it's what I
love. It's just there. I feel it, and sometimes I've seen
glimpses of it in his eyes."
"Yes, Dizzy don't be annoyed but isn't that the
spiritual Jim you mean? It's apart from his body and
apart from his mind, something else, something more
real, only so intangible "
"No," said Dizzy veering suddenly. "It's glamour,
imagination. I can't help it, can't help feeling things
like that about Jim. Like the silly feeling I have just
now that I'll never change, that I can't change. When
I know I'll forget in a year, in six months. I know its
THE LOVE LEGEND 251
an immature infatuation based on the mental con-
sciousness of love. The fact that I can't forget him is
quite as involuntary as the fact that my hand shook
so that I could hardly write his address clearly, just
now, at the sight of his dear handwriting."
Always a little ridiculous in her determined reac-
tions, Dizzy had overleaped her own pretensions in
her desire to flaunt the love legend.
II
Days later she came in, weary, tired, with a letter
of rejection from Hopkins.
"Dizzy, dear, you seem to be getting worse, and
worse. I've never seen you so consistently sad!"
Dizzy sighed. "I have been so sure of a gift for
writing. And now! Why I have felt this to be the
best story so far. A kernel of harsh realism set in a
shell of tenuous sophistication and I know the man-
ner of getting the tale out is unusual."
"It's a shame. It's just spite!" said Ward hotly
partisan. Dizzy continued.
"And now this! Just as I need encouragement as I
have never needed it before. And the nerve that I
have always had is going with every ounce of my in-
dividuality!"
"Dizzy darling, it's just nerves! You've been work-
ing yourself to death."
"I am beside myself with self pity, Ward. I know
it. You ought to go away and leave me. I'm dis-
gusting. But I love to have you pooh-pooh my fears,
sitting beside me, looking so lovely, a concrete example
of the theory that living is fine. You discredit my
horrors, and things, somehow, may balance up."
"It's Jim that's wearing your nerves down, so."
252 THE LOVE LEGEND
"Life has simply been the raw-edge of hysteria to
me for some time. I have been more keenly unhappy
than I dreamt in my unhappy childhood even. I re-
member when things seemed impossible, and they did
often, I said to myself, with aged philosophy, 'O well,
I'll feel all right tomorrow!' And I did.
"But nowadays I'm not seeing any tomorrows. I
suppose it is because the things I want are more
bound up with the future. It seems I can't have any-
thing, and I have found more terror and desolation in
every day. I wonder if the game is worth the candle.
I would find things bearable if only I liked myself.
You know I have, with a kind of indulgent and pleased
liking. It's funny, I think, though, you may not un-
derstand, but I liked my reactions to things! I used
to feel very troubled, worried, impatient, about things
I didn't like. It was always a physical impatience. I
would shrug my shoulder and throw back my head in
annoyance. But it was always a hurried annoyance.
I think I had a picture of myself hurrying very fast
with a big stride, and being annoyed about things.
And if I liked myself it was a fleeting liking. But now
I am just plain miserable. Something quite static that
simply disgusts me when I see it in the glass. And if
I am not that, I look sleek, and poised in a hard way
to myself."
"Dizzy dear, I know!"
"Way down in my heart I must have thought all the
time that I was a chosen one because I can't bear not
being able to go on with things as I wanted."
She sat analyzing her suffering with a thin pretense
of sophistication. When the keen disappointment of
the rejection from Hopkins had passed, she resigned
from her job and plunged her energy into the novel she
had always meant to write.
THE LOVE LEGEND 253
III
A certain Mrs. Marchrose, whom Oz had been tak-
ing about for a period of about three years, began to
make life unpleasant for him. She had originally been
a member of the set in which Oz grew up, but had
made a very imprudent marriage at an early age, and
had separated from her husband about ten years later,
after an unhappy time. Since, Oz had been support-
ing her. Most people suspected it, but she had never
been openly snubbed. She was sensitive enough to
feel a vague kind of gossip about her wherever she
went.
Recently she had been granted a divorce from her
husband, and she now wanted Oz to marry her. Oz,
who had been comfortable in the relationship that had
subsisted between them for three years, had no desire
to make her his wife. If he were to consent to any
such an upheaval in his well-lined bachelor existence
he would want to do something brilliant, like taking a
young, beautiful and fascinating girl like Ward, or a
woman with a fortune. The social aspect of his mar-
riage would influence him.
So he evaded Mrs. Marchrose, evaded her charm-
ingly, and with an air almost of pursuit. She didn't
realize how insecure her position was, and so she
turned him out. It was to be a lesson, and to bring
him to his senses. He accepted her ultimatum grace-
fully, and withdrew finally. And then because she was
consumed with wrath and wanted to make him suffer,
and also because she thought it would steady her so-
cial equilibrium, she married another man, a very
wealthy man who had always wanted her.
So Oz was free, as free as Ward had always fancied
254 THE LOVE LEGEND
him to be. Free to hang by slender golden threads to
her chariot of romance. He proposed to her beauti-
fully, bought her a gorgeous ring, and she reached her
zenith of happiness.
BOOK FOUR
WARD
CHAPTER I
LITTLE tables nestled in snug booths lighted by
small shaded lights. In the center of the dance floor
the fountain was illuminated by dull blue globes that
threw shadows on the figures swaying in the dim light
to the languorous, passion stirring strains of the best
jazz orchestra on the south side.
Oz was taking Ward there to dance for the first
time; Ward with her happy excited face and the new
ring on the third finger of her left hand. With them
was his nephew, young John Greenleaf Jupp, and a
girl with whom he was evidently infatuated named
Miss Fluke. He had explained hurriedly to the
slightly vexed Oz that she respectably worked in a
State street store.
Miss Fluke was tiny without being dainty. Well
manicured coarse hands, a large pored skin, hempy
locks that had been ironed into frizzes, teeth protrud-
ing through thick red lips, Miss Fluke had eyes that
held a sex challenge for every man, and she turned on
her conversation as one turns water out of a tap.
"Oh, Mr. Chester. How's Mr. Osbert Chester this
evening? Does your mother know you're out Mr.
Chester? Don't you dare to try to kiss me Mr. Ches-
ter. Good evening Mr. Jupp. Watch out Mr. Jupp
or I'll flirt with you Mr. Jupp, and then what will you
do, Mr. John Greenleaf Jupp?"
But Miss Fluke favored Oz with oblique glances
even when she was in the midst of turning her shower
257
258 THE LOVE LEGEND
of phrases on the unimportant nephew. These side-
long looks were returned with much interest though
Oz kept a wary eye on Ward.
But tonight Ward was quite blind. She sat there
almost silent, happy to be with him, enjoying the sub-
dued lights, the music, the joyousness of the crowd.
Happy because they were engaged at last and now no
one could ever take him away from her, and proud
but a little contemptuous that Miss Fluke could not
control her admiration for him.
This place where Oz had brought Ward was one of
those curious resorts where almost every group be-
comes exhilarated after absorbing a number of the
soft drinks offered by the management.
On a little platform a few feet away sat a well fed
man who was perhaps fifty. Exuberance was showing
in him to a point never before observed in a man who
has been imbibing lemon phosphates exclusively. The
man experienced difficulty in remaining seated between
dances, and was continually falling off of his chair, a
performance that he explained largely to the people in
the cafe was due to the fact that he was not used to
sitting on a platform.
The music blared. It was Ward's turn to dance
with Mr. John Greenleaf Jupp. Willowy and clammy,
Mr. Jupp wore his blonde oily hair long, and it
brushed Ward's cheek as he leaned over her, holding
her close in the dance and staring deeply into her eyes,
whenever she looked at him. She was uncomfortable,
and failed to notice that Oz held his twittering partner
tight against him. When the dance was over Miss
Fluke drew herself closer in his arms and gazed into
his eyes with the look of a woman in the grip of pas-
sion before they rejoined Ward and Mr. Jupp.
"Here we are again, Mr. Chester," she said as they
THE LOVE LEGEND 259
sat down. "How is Mr. Chester this evening? You're
a handsome thing, Mr. Chester, but I suspect that you
are rather a naughty thing, Mr. Chester. .You can't
deny it, Mr. Chester. You're rather naughty. You
know you are."
The boy took some dice out of his pocket and began
to shake them idly on the table.
"Oh the darling little dice, Mr. Jupp. Oh the cun-
ning little dice. Oh the naughty Johnny Jupp with
the adorable little dice. Oh we'll have to look out for
him. We'll have to look out for Mr. John Greenleaf
Jupp."
A die dropped on the floor. Stooping to search for
it, Oz rested one hand on Miss Fluke's knee. But
the die was not to be found. Ward looked, Miss Fluke
looked, even Mr. John Greenleaf Jupp languidly as-
sisted, but it seemed to be gone.
The gentleman at the next table who had been hav-
ing so much trouble in remaining seated volunteered
his aid in the search for the die. They moved the
tables out. The muddled gentleman became earnest
in his efforts to recover the lost die. Oz hustled Ward
off to dance with Mr. Jupp while they hunted.
The inebriated man found the die.
"Le's shake," he offered.
When Ward returned there was a bill on the table.
Oz lost. Another dollar went into the pot. The man
shook. He turned up seven. Another dollar went in.
Oz shook and won. His dollar disappeared. The
man won. Another dollar disappeared. Ten dollars
in the pot again. A crowd gathered around the table.
Some one said they might be put out for gambling.
Oz lost, the man lost. Oz won, the man won. Always
the ten-spot remained in the center. ?
260 THE LOVE LEGEND
-
Ward prayed to have the game stopped. "Dear
God, make Oz win," was her direct appeal. There
were fifteen dollars in the pot. Her wish was granted.
Oz pocketed the money.
The man ordered drinks for the crowd. He was
Solomon Goldberg, proprietor of the "Gold Garden,"
one of the newest and most expensive hotels in the
city, overlooking the lake.
Miss Fluke gave him a profound glance. His
oriental eyes flashed back at her out of his shiny,
brown, fat face. "You're the little girl for me," he
said, and when the music started again, she danced
off with him. In the middle of the floor he sat down
and proclaimed that he was only a paper doll.
"I'm giving you a song with gestures," he said, as
Miss Fluke assisted him to his feet. "And here's the
very best little paper doll baby in the flock." He
swooped Miss Fluke into his arms and kissed her.
They walked back to the tables and sat down. Gold-
berg deserted the man and girl at his table and planted
himself down beside Miss Fluke.
"Le's shake again," he suggested to Oz. But Ward
interposed. "No, no, it's time for us to go home. It's
getting awfully late, and we all have to go now."
"Le's shake just once," pleaded Goldberg, "and if
you're man wins he can roll you home in a taxi."
"Yes, and if I lose, she can walk, I suppose," said
Oz sarcastically. "It's only about eight miles."
"Aw, you gotta shake, just once," begged Goldberg.
They shook.
Oz again won.
Goldberg took Miss Fluke home, Johnnie Jupp went
off by himself, thinking of various dismal forms of sui-
cide.
THE LOVE LEGEND 261
II
In the taxi Oz took Ward in his arms and kissed
her again, and again. He wanted her soon, soon, soon,
he said. He couldn't wait much longer.
"Mother thinks I ought to come to California to
marry. She's taken a darling house, she says. It
would be wonderful for a small wedding."
"All that long trip! My God, why not go down
town in a few days and get a license and have it over
without fuss. Then go to California on our wedding
trip?"
Ward almost promised. But a trifling thing upset
her. After he left her that night she sat up until four,
painstakingly copying a long poem which appealed to
her. She mailed it, and when she saw him the next
day she found he had not read it. And as she was
brooding over the inexplicable lack of love shown in
this, there came, of all things, a letter from Rod.
It was a long, hesitating, explaining love letter. He
had never forgotten her, never ceased to think of her.
For four years she had been alive in his dreams. He
had been called away by a telegram saying his father
was dying, and had found that his place at home would
not admit a wife at present. The necessity of taking
over his father's affairs, which were in bad shape so
that his younger sisters might have money for school,
and college, had immediately confronted him.
During the first bitter year he had not written be-
cause he had persuaded himself that Ward did not
care. Why had she called up Bill Wicker, when their
engagement was so very new. With the passing of
months he had come to believe that there was some
explanation. He was not asking for it. He was hum-
262 THE LOVE LEGEND
bly, apologetically asking her to overlook the way he
had left. It seemed to him very nearly inexcusable.
Now, he went on to say, things were clearing up
financially. All the debts were paid off. The busi-
ness was good, and he was ready to marry. He ended
by begging to be allowed to come to Chicago to
see her.
The beauty of it. The sheer wonder of his loving
her like that for four years without a sign. The mys-
tic bond had been between them all the time. He was
suddenly there in the room with her, young, ardent,
dominating, arresting. Oz looked shrunken beside
him, old, a caricature of the boy he wanted to appear.
That night in a fit of temper she gave Oz back his
ring and told him about Rod. They quarreled hotly,
and melted into each other's arms at the end.
In retrospect the whole affair annoyed Oz. He
hated being moved emotionally. He wanted to settle
down to a comfortable married life, or else be allowed
to go back to the unbound existence he had led before
he met Ward.
in
One day Oz, passing through the store where Miss
Fluke worked, stopped to talk to her. She was look-
ing more prosperous in some mysterious way. He
couldn't tell just how. Perhaps she was being better
fed. She clung to him with her eyes as a .wet cat
dings to a post in the lake.
"Will you lunch with me," he asked her.
"Oh the dreadful Mr. Osbert Chester. The naughty
Mr. Osbert Chester with the pretty little girl who loves
him so," twittered Miss Fluke, her normally raw com-
plexion becoming like a piece of uncooked steak in
THE LOVE LEGEND 263
her delight at seeing him. "How is the dear little
thing? I thought she was just one of the most charm-
ing girls I had ever met."
Oz leaned over the counter. "Will you have lunch-
eon with me?"
Miss Fluke accepted Oz.
She was flattering and satisfying to his vanity after
Ward's exactions. He wasn't sure that he cared to
have anyone make as many demands on him as Ward
had been making.
When he helped Miss Fluke on with her coat he
noticed that it was exquisite in texture and lined with
the softest silk. He held it in his hands for a few
moments while she stood looking up at him over her
shoulder.
"Hurry up," he chided her. "I'm not getting any
pleasure out of standing here holding this coat."
She flung him a saucy glance that subtly imparted a
tinge of repartee to their banalities. "Well, I assure
you that I'm not getting any pleasure out of it," she
responded.
"Won't you come and see poor lonely little me,
sometime?" Miss Fluke asked as they were parting.
Oz thought he might. She was staying at the Gold
Garden.
He did call on her, after Ward had been particularly
unreasonable.
Miss Fluke was sincerely attracted to him, though
by no means blind to his money. She had a small but
luxurious apartment, and a store of excellent liquor.
And so, Oz contracted another intimacy which be-
gan to run neck and neck with Ward's great romance.
CHAPTER II
WARD met Oz for luncheon at the Congress Hotel.
Afterward he had an engagement with a business ac-
quaintance a man named Piper, whom he brought
up and introduced.
Piper was small, nervous, enthusiastic. He varied
in temperament, but not in type from Oz, Mortimer
Glosser, Jim Howells, all the business men Ward had
been meeting. He did not have much to say to Ward,
but addressed himself to Oz almost exclusively.
"Come on out to the apartment and get a drink,
Oz," he urged. "Come on, both of you. We can talk
matters over, and I have a collection of camera studies
you must see."
"All right," said Oz. "Fine! Come on Ward, you
have nothing to do."
S Ward assented with her usual docility. They
climbed into Piper's roadster and started south. The
two men talked business. The sky hung like a grimy
wet sheet between the buildings, dripping incessantly
upon the scrambling populace. She sighed and whim-
sically fancied herself Oz's neglected wife. The men
talked on and on, ignoring her.
They left the car in front of some bachelor apart-
ments of red brick.
264
THE LOVE LEGEND 265
"My girl must have left some of her clothes here."
Piper picked up a white silk undervest and a pink
satin garter, as he led Oz and Ward through his apart-
ment on the way to the bar he had in his kitchen.
"Maybe she's still here." He pushed the door into
his camera studio open. "Well, here's the little
sweetie in here. Get fixed up pretty, dear. I want
Chester to see that I've got the nicest girl in town.
And he's got some Jane with him himself. Hurry up,
and I'll mix you a drink while you're powdering your
nose."
A girl, small, blonde, delicate, came out of the
studio.
"I want you folks to meet my little Clarice, the best
little scout and pal that a man ever had. This is Mr.
Chester. I brought him out to the flat for a good
time, and incidentally to do a little business. And this
is Miss Fluke, isn't it?"
"Miss Harris," murmured Ward, inclining her head.
She had heard the name Fluke indistinctly and at-
tached no importance to it.
It was evident that Piper was anxious to please Oz.
He began mixing drinks. His collection of camera
studies mostly beautiful nudes of the girl Clarice,
were proudly shown. They were having their third
drink when the telephone rang.
Piper answered. As the three sat conversing and
drinking, fragments of conversation floated in to them.
"All right, Thursday." He laughed. "Oh no, there's
no danger of that."
Clarice's face coloured with passion. "No danger,"
266 THE LOVE LEGEND
she said when he came from the phone. "No. There's
no danger of my being here."
Her angry tone roused an ugly mood in Piper.
"What do you think of her, Chester?" he said.
"Your little pal wouldn't go back on you like this
would she? She doesn't get sore every time you plan
a little sport, does she? The other night we were sit-
ting here, right on that davenport, the two of us. She
was being nice to me, and we were having a good time.
'Want you to go out with other girls all you want to/
she said to me, just as sweet as could be, but whenever
I try to do that little thing, she raises the devil."
The girl's pale face had flusned as she listened to
him.
She turned to Ward and Oz. "Now listen to my
side of it. When I want to go out with another man,
I can't. That's the end of it. He won't let me. But
when he wants to bring a girl up here, I have to get
out. Where can I go? I have no place to go, and
nothing to do."
"Plenty of places you can go," sneered Piper. "Do
you want to go back where I found you?"
The remark seemed to shoot into the girl's heart.
She subsided at once. Her manner become conciliat-
ing and humble. Suddenly she began to cry and
rushed from the room. Piper turned to his guests and
said ill-naturedly:
"I took her out of that life, and this is the way she
repays me. Hell. I like the kid. Damn it, I'm good
to her. She'd have been dead by this time if I hadn't
got her. Every time I want to have a little fun she
gets sore. I give her everything she wants."
"Except love," said Ward, who had not been un-
moved.
"I don't want her to love me," said Piper furiously.
THE LOVE LEGEND 267
"I might as well be married to her. I want her to let
me alone. I want her to be loving when I want her,
and to get out when I don't. Damned if she can sulk
in there. She's got to come out and make herself
agreeable. That's what I keep her for."
Ill
They left a few minutes later. Oz called a taxi and
they rode home in silence. Ward seething inwardly
was outwardly cold with him for taking her into a
situation like that. What sort of a girl did he take
her for, she asked herself dramaturgically, and en-
larged on this theme in furious silent paragraphs as
they rode homeward. Oz, in a corner, said nothing
and seemed absorbed in his own thoughts.
At her hotel he endeavored to bid her a polite adieu,
but her emotions were demanding some sort of an out-
let. He was afraid to walk off as he wanted to, and
so followed her up to the apartment with a very much
assumed air of nonchalance.
"What I am interested in," he said pulling off his
cream-colored buckskin gloves with a leisurely social,
bantering air, "is this small town guy of yours? When
is he coming and why is he coming and who the devil
is he?"
"Oh he's just the man I'll probably marry," said
Ward, with ill-suppressed venom behind her tones.
"Well," said Oz, laying his stick across the table
carefully, and feeling for a cigarette, "in that case
you'd probably better turn him over to me. I'll edu-
cate him for you. He can stay in my apartment while
he's here in town, and I'll see that no harm befalls
him. I give you my word that I will take a passionate,
fatherly interest in him."
268 THE LOVE LEGEND
Ward had not removed her wraps. She had taken a
straight chair. She leaned forward with an uncon-
trolled awkward movement. In her face anger had
given place to a sweetness of expression which did not
conceal the grief she felt at Oz's flippancy.
"He isn't so desperately young as all that."
"I suppose not, I suppose not." Oz waved his hand
lightly. "It's not the years that count. It's the ex-
perience. I live in the city. He lives in the country.
"I'm sure I could give him some very good pointers.
I could see that he keeps to the street car lines in his
wanderings for instance. We certainly wouldn't want
to lose our little village wild flower."
Ward was gaining control of herself. "You don't
take my affairs seriously at all."
"Oh, but I do! I dol You are mistaken, my dear,
I do! Here I am ready and willing to show your
young friend the town. In fact, I'll even go along on
the wedding tour. I'll lend you my car and we can
run down to New Orleans or some place. I can at
least show you where the good places to eat are along
the way."
"You are ridiculous," said Ward, without humor.
"He knows the country as well as you do, probably.
He took a walking trip once from Chicago to Nash-
ville."
"There you are! That's why I ought to go along.
I wouldn't make you walk. I've got a regular kind of
a trip planned for you a motor trip. But I wouldn't
consider it safe for you to go alone with that boy.
Running around the country with a child like that al-
most anything might happen to you "
"How awful you are!" said Ward. He was forcing
her against her will into an interest in the subject he
THE LOVE LEGEND 269
had selected. "I shouldn't let you talk to me about
him in this way."
"Oh you don't care about him, you know you don't
care about him?"
"Don't you want me to care about him?"
Oz rose and took up his stick. "Really, that's your
own affair," he said. He had successfully diverted
her mind from the incident in Piper's room. Wisdom
told him he had better go.
"You are the most self-absorbed person I've ever
seen!"
"Really, Ward, you are hard on me. You turn me
down, and engage yourself to another man, and then
upbraid me because I am not joyful about it."
"You are joyful!"
"No, I'm not!" He laid down his stick and bent
over her chair.
She didn't look up. "Oh, go! I know you want to
go. Why don't you go?"
She longed to have him take her in his arms and
soothe her and comfort her. She could not control
her feelings. She knew that her exactions bored him.
But she told herself that all she wanted was just a
little sign of real love from him.
He sighed and straightened up.
"Well, fair lady, just as you command. I shall be
most sorry to leave you "
He put on his hat and made his escape. When he
was gone, Ward, like a girl in a movie, rose and fol-
lowed him with arms outstretched to the door. She
fell sobbing against the wall.
"You can have your old 'my dear,' " sobbed Ward.
"If that's all you care for me. I don't want it." She
laughed hysterically at herself, dried her eyes and
turned to the mirror opposite the door. "Oh Oz, you
270 THE LOVE LEGEND
have to care for me. You must. You do. You sim-
ply have to love me!"
She went slowly back into the living room and threw
herself down on the couch. Her brain went over and
over the afternoon. Why had everything gone so
wrong? What was the matter with her? What did
she want anyway? She had thought she wanted Rod
for so long, and now he was coming. Why did she
flay herself about Oz? Why did she allow him to
make so much difference to her. Why couldn't she
be satisfied with his friendship. It was what she
wanted, she had said. Did she want Oz's love, now
that it was too late? She fell to sobbing. She didn't
know what she wanted. She wanted Rod's young,
boyish ardent affection. She couldn't bear this cold-
ness, this matter-of-factness, this middle-agedness in
Oz. He had no zest for life and for the little things of
love that meant so much to her as Rod had. But his
personality, his head, his shoulders, the picture of him
stamped on her brain was so much nearer and dearer.
She couldn't give him up, even for Rod Rod, the per-
fect, the ideal. She tried to conjure up a picture of
Rod and failed. She couldn't bring an exact image
of him into her consciousness. Oz's image was there,
which ever way she turned. But surely it was meant
that she should marry Rod. Four whole years with-
out a sign and both of them had gone on caring.
Surely there was something fore-ordained, eternal,
about a love like that. If Rod would only come so
that she could forget this turmoil, this unrest, this con-
stant unhappiness over Oz. To be rid of Oz, to no
longer care what he said or did. To regard him with
indifference when he seemed cold and far-off from her.
She sobbed again at the picture of him as he had sat,
smoking and telling her that he would be glad to have
THE LOVE LEGEND 271
her marry Rod. He was absolutely indifferent, then?
Oh no, she could not believe it. Perhaps he, too, was
feeling as badly as she. She almost smiled at the pic-
ture of Oz, sobbing among pillows. No, it wasn't in
Oz to care like that. And that was why she wanted
Rod. He would care. He had proved that he could
care. Her wants would be his wants. He would love
her and cherish her, and their whole romance would
be beautiful, imperishable. A romance that she could
never have with Oz. Oz would forget things. He was
too self-absorbed. Comfort meant more to him than
love. Ah, if Rod would only come. And then she
would forget Oz, forever. How wonderful it would be
never to think of him again. Never to want him again.
What rest, what perfect rest! Suddenly she found
herself sitting up with clenched hands, her brain
whirling with anger and passion. Oz shouldn't escape
her. He shouldn't be allowed to pursue his gay, happy,
care-free way while she sobbed and wanted him, and
was unable to think of anything else. Desperation
seemed to be closing in on her. She must do some-
thing, do something. Oh, something wonderful and
big and arresting that would make Oz come to her like
steel to a magnet. So that she would have him al-
ways, every thought, every breath.
The telephone rang. It must be Oz, calling to beg
forgiveness.
"Hello."
"Hello Ward?" It was Oz. Her heart leaped.
Then she answered coldly.
"Yes."
"I have your purse, and I was afraid you might be
worried about it, so I called you up to let you know."
Her heart dragged itself down heavily.
"It was kind of you I'm sure."
272 THE LOVE LEGEND
"It was careless of me to walk off with it in my
pocket; I can't imagine what made me do it. I will
see that you get it immediately."
"Thank you very much, but I wouldn't dream of
troubling you, Oz."
"No trouble at all. I'll mail it to you. You will
get it in a few days!"
Oh! She nearly screamed with pain. A few days!
She had to see him at once. There were tears in her
eyes but her voice was calm as she played up to Oz.
"Oh no, don't mail it. I'm superstitious about the
mails and I know I'll never get it."
"There isn't the slightest danger of its being lost.
I will have it insured."
"I don't care. I won't have it mailed. I'll tell you
what you can do. You can take it down to one of the
department stores and check it, and then mail me the
check."
"Yes, or I might take it down and hock it and send
you the pawn ticket."
"Don't be silly!"
"Look here, Ward, I'm not half as silly as you are.
If you can't bear the sight of me, I'll drive down and
leave it at the desk in the hotel and the clerk can give
it to you."
"I didn't say I couldn't bear the sight of you. I
only don't want you to trouble yourself."
"Well, you know it's no trouble to me. I'd love to
bring it out."
"I'd love to see you."
"Then have dinner with me."
"Do you want me to?"
"Of course."
"All right. I'd love to."
She turned away from the phone joyous. At dinner
THE LOVE LEGEND 273
she radiated tenderness on Oz; her beauty had never
shone more brightly. Oz was very proud to be her
companion. There was no other girl quite like Ward.
He kissed her good night when they parted. She
clung to him with the happiness of the earth after a
spring rain. Nothing was said about Rod, or Ward's
engagement to either Rod or Oz.
CHAPTER III
THIS was the kind of thing that was always going
on between Ward and Oz. It wearied him a trifle, but
Ward's happy moments made up for it to some extent.
If only she would go on being a butterfly, being happy
and beautiful, and not demanding impossible things.
But the spiritual prop of Ward's whole life had been
the sentimental idea that the touch of her lover would
change the world for her. The legend that her mother
had taught her had clogged every issue for her. Early
she had sentimentalized love, and called the fiction
Rod. And then she had been caught by the glamour
of Oz's position, his charm of person; and now pas-
sion was gripping her, highly colored like a painful
fever through its failure to fit into her early conception
of it.
Ward longed for beauty in her life with an intense
living force that was with her every moment. Her
body, perfect, always well groomed, her home, as beau-
tiful as she could make it, her relations with her
friends, all splendid, shining, loving. Everything that
she put her hand to was exquisite in detail. She was
incapable of turning out a badly done piece of work.
Nothing but perfection satisfied her.
Her love affair must be perfection, and the summit
of all her achievements. There must be nothing, not
one incident of distrust, disbelief, or unhappiness to
come between her and her lover. That was why the
affair with Oz seemed tarnished, and the affair with
274
THE LOVE LEGEND 275
Rod, clean. The temporary stain on the love of Rod
had been removed by his four years of constancy.
When she saw him, everything would be all right.
And then Rod returned. He came, eager, diffident,
encouraged by her letters, which had almost accepted
his offers.
And when she looked at him she knew that his love
for her was the great reality of his life. He had lived
with her image as she had lived with his. The knowl-
edge came to her in his silent figure, in his gaze, it
was somehow more a part of him than anything else
about him.
Rod's engaging, youthful manner had left him. The
grace, the ease that had clung to him, dominating any
scene of which he was a part during that summer in
Lakeshore had fled, leaving him older, almost middle-
aged. He wore his twenty-seven years with a sedate,
sobered manner as if they had been ten years more.
He was no longer the gay conquering king of the
universe of youth. He was a small town business
man, who had to be careful that the place he had won
in his little world was not snatched from him. He
was away from home, out of his element. He showed
it. He entered a room quietly, said little, and was
polite and serious over every remark that was ad-
dressed to him.
The social manner had dropped from him like a
cloak of yesterday. The old gay poise that .Ward had
so admired, and in remembering loved, had deserted
him. He did not even have the fictitious youth that
Oz paraded. There was nothing. No charm, no trace,
except a resemblance of feature to the old Rod. Here
was a new man, a man who loved her with a depth of
feeling that she was as conscious of as she was of the
big lake always lying at the gateway of the city. It
276 THE LOVE LEGEND
was there, it was big, it would always be there. It
belonged in her life. It seemed as if she had always
known that Rod still loved her; that he would come
back to her.
And yet she no more loved him now than she had
loved him in those first few weeks when he had sought
her so ardently, so youthfully, so romantically, that
the flavor of it, after he had gone had given her an
ideal that had kept her from falling in love again until
she had met Oz.
His love was the most real thing in her life. More
real than her love for Oz, in spite of her suffering over
him. Her love for Oz fluctuated. She loved him. She
hated him. She loved him. But Rod's love was al-
ways there, unchanging, a mighty eternal fact.
II
And then began an endless succession of days in
which Ward tortured Rod, and Oz tortured Ward.
She would play out silly little scenes with Oz in which
she was a spirit of anguish scantily covered with the
robes and mask of joyousness. Social patter gaped
now and then to disclose the delicate fabric of suffer-
ing her habitual garment.
But it was in the night that the real terrors of deso-
lation assailed her, crushed her heart like a flower that
has been tramped on. It was then that she realized
to the full her feeling for Oz, in the sharp fear that
knifed her. What if, after all she should lose him.
She put the thought away as unbearable, and went
back to her love, which was shot through with hate
and resentment, and the desire for revenge in all its
vile fascination like the face of sin revealed in a flash
of lightning. She would throw herself on the bed while
THE LOVE LEGEND 277
her body seemed to vibrate through it, shaking it,
beating up and down with the passionate rhythm of her
blood, willing that Oz must suffer, praying to God not
to let him escape.
But out of these nights of tears, out of these after-
noons of meditating, there was slowly growing a great
resolution. Like the core of a boil that must force its
way painfully out, leaving a hole in the sensitive flesh,
a decision was slowly forming in her inner self that
would sooner or later bring Ward to a desperate cli-
max.
Ill
In a final frenzied effort to forget Oz, Ward at-
tempted to switch her affections to Rod. She had
played fast and loose with Rod for three weeks, dis-
missing him, calling him back, and breaking engage-
ments with him at a moment's notice, for Oz.
Oz was coming to call, and she was dressed and
ready to receive him at a quarter of eight. She sat
down with a book to wait for him. She couldn't ex-
pect him before eight-thirty, she told herself. Still,
he might come at eight. In the next room Dizzy
pounded her typewriter.
At eight the telephone called her. It was a member
of a charity to which she belonged asking her to sell
flowers at a bazaar. When she had finished with this
conversation Rod called her up, and she talked to him,
with an unquiet mind. Oz might come in at any mo-
ment now.
Eight-thirty. She fidgeted. Then she called the
downstairs office and enquired if a caller had come
for her; if anyone had tried to get her on the phone
while she was talking. No. Dizzy came in and asked
278 THE LOVE LEGEND
her if she had seen the dictionary any place, then
went back to work. She resolutely began to read, and
turned a page, going over every word without being
able to sense the meaning. Why didn't he come? Had
he forgotten?
"Thought you were expecting a caller tonight. Oz,
or somebody?" called Dizzy from the next room.
"He's late."
Nine o'clock. Well, of course, it was ridiculous to
be upset so early. Often he didn't finish dinner be-
fore nine. She tried to read again. Oh Oz, Oz, why
don't you come?
Nine-thirty. He can't be coming. She started to
pull off her blouse. Might as well go to bed. Then
she threw herself involuntarily on the couch and sob-
bed and sobbed into the familiar velvet cushions.
Never, never would she see him again. This was the
end. She pictured herself on a desert island with him.
He pleaded with her to forgive him for this. She saw
herself turning away, hard and cold with anger. For
something dire, dreadful, to happen to him! She hated
him. And sat up wondering how any human could be
such a fiend. She wondered how he could do it? How
could he do it? Her eyes caught the clock. Nine-
forty. She fell into another fit of crying, seized her
book, determined to read, determined to forget, and
choked as her eyes traveled mechanically down the
page. Thinking, thinking, torturing herself. She
would have this to stand all night. Oh, she couldn't
stand it. She couldn't. She jumped to her feet and
began crazily putting her blouse back on, rushing to
the mirror nervously, jabbing powder on her swelling
face. He must come. He must come. He had to
come. She couldn't live if he didn't.
At ten-thirty she called up Rod, and asked him to
THE LOVE LEGEND 279
meet her in the lobby of the hotel. She could not en-
dure another minute.
Rod took her out into the park. They walked for
some time in silence. Rod knew she was very un-
happy. He suffered with her as much. In a fellow-
ship of pain they tramped through the ash-pale winter
park, over to the lake, down the promenade, saying
little.
"I've never told you Rod that you were the hero of
my dreams for four long years."
Rod spoke huskily. "And then you met some one
else. I came just too late."
"No. An infatuation. Nothing real. No sem-
blance of reality. It seems impossible for me to live a
quiet peaceful inner existence, Rod. It's very bad for
me. But after you left, I felt it much. I was hurt,
and lost. I didn't forget. You were always with me,
a dream person."
He put his hand on her sleeve. "And you were al-
ways with me, Ward. All those years in that stifling
town. You can't think how the girls in that town
looked to me, after you. There was absoultely no di-
version there even of the ordinary small town sort,
because the girls were all so different from you so
inferior. I used to dream about how I would bring
you back there and make them all sit up and take
notice. Oh Ward, if you could have cared for me how
proud well, perhaps it's just as well. I would be be-
side myself with joy, I suppose. And then those
ghastly summer nights, when the sky hung overhead
full of stars, low and close like they were that night
on the beach when I kissed you. Do you remem-
ber?"
"Rod, I'd give anything, anything, if we had mar-
ried then."
280 THE LOVE LEGEND
"Oh, I couldn't have asked you to come and share
that life. Washing dishes, Ward, I can't see you in
the picture. Lord knows, I have nothing to offer you
now just a fairly comfortable home in a small town.
But marriage four years ago would have meant
squalor. And then there were the girls to consider.
They had a right to their schooling."
"Rod, Rod. I'm so unhappy."
"Darling. Oh Ward. Don't." He had her in his
arms, his lips on her hair, caressing her in little broken
phrases. "My dear girl. Ward, sweetheart. Can't I
try? Won't you just give me a chance? You needn't
suffer like this, anyway. I know I'm not anything
much for you."
"Oh Rod, Rod." There was some comfort in his
arms, in his physical presence. She relaxed. Why
not? Why not give up Oz definitely and finally? For-
get this turmoil and go with Rod. On a wave of de-
cision she lifted her head and met his hungry lips with
her own.
He held her fiercely, intensely, as if to concentrate
his whole life into that moment. But his passion car-
ried her only a little way. While he was still tremb-
ling, holding her close, murmuring, "Ward, my Ward,"
she was taking command of the situation; surveying
it coolly.
"We'll begin where we left off that summer night,"
she said. "I'm not just the same girl. I'm old, now.
Tonight I feel terribly old."
IV
But it didn't work. Inside of three days she had
broken off finally, irrevocably with Rod, and sent him
back to his little town. Her engagement with Oz was
THE LOVE LEGEND 281.
renewed. He was eager to dose the matter, wearied
with Ward's exactions.
And then quite by chance she saw him taking tea
one afternoon with Miss Fluke. The festering sore
had come to a head at last.
CHAPTER IV
HE looked up almost as she saw him, rose and came
over to where she sat. By an extraordinary chance
she was alone. Calling on a friend near-by, she had
dropped in afterward for a sandwich.
"I must see you at once," said Ward. "And alone."
Oz sensed the crisis.
"There's a little reception room over here where we
can go."
It was a small white room. She seated herself on a
straight, high-backed chair. Behind her the slender
gray design! of shadows was cast by a handful of
rushes in a vase upon the white wall, a design that was
never seen before and will never be seen again, since
it varied with the journey of the light. The sun had
fled the room except for a square that struck golden
on the carpet to her right, its tinge repeated in the
crisp yellow frame of her face. Like a step in the
dance which does not pause upon an attitude this mo-
ment fitted into her life, but in her memory it re-
mained always immortal, like a picture that has been
painted.
Her face was white and set, and sweet with pur-
pose. Her angry passions were all gone. "I'm never
going to see you again, Oz."
He began to fume, nervously to set up a re-action to
the unexpected dignity she suddenly possessed.
"You're so darn jealous, Ward. What harm is there
in a little tea at the Gold Garden. We aren't going
282
THE LOVE LEGEND 283
to limit our friendship with the other sex. We've al-
ways agreed to that. It's so damned middle-class."
"That has nothing to do with it. It's just come
over me. I've just realized it. That you don't love
me. That you can't love me."
Suddenly Oz wanted her. He arose and came
around a small table that stood between them, and
grasped her shoulders. He wanted desperately to get
back his old domination.
"You're talking nonsense."
"No!" She evaded his gaze, her eyes fixed on the
spot of sunlight on the carpet. "Something has come
to me. It's as clear as it can be. I wouldn't mind a
little thing like your lunching with another woman if I
were sure of you, if I could ever be sure of you. But
I can't. That's what has been the matter all along. I
knew down in my heart that you could never love
me."
Oz experienced a little twinge of desire for honesty.
"Love doesn't mean the same thing to us probably,
but in my way I love you as much as any man can
love you. It's not moonshine and romance with me
any more. I'm getting old, I guess."
"Moonshine and romance isn't love, and I'm just
finding that out. Love is honesty and dependability,
loyalty,"
Oz shrugged. "My dear girl, why didn't you marry
your little country boy. I'm sure he would have given
you all that, and more. Look here, Ward, I want you.
I want you, damn bad. If I didn't I wouldn't marry
you. You've got me, and I'd like to know what more
you want. There are plenty of girls I can have. I've
never seen the woman yet that I didn't think well,
what do you want more?"
"Love, that's all."
284 THE LOVE LEGEND
"All right. Say I don't love you for the sake of the
argument, I'm willing to marry you anyway. That
ought to satisfy you."
: "But it doesn't. This is the end."
"No!"
"Yes!"
They panted suddenly with the strain of it. Ward
looked at him as he stood over her, then rose, shook
herself.
"But why, Ward?" he said with unexpected gentle-
ness.
"It's come to me. Something has clicked down in-
side of me. Everything is changed."
She looked at him clearly, blue eyes unruffled. It
came from somewhere deep down in her and carried
conviction to Oz, a sickening conviction.
His eyes became younger than Ward had ever seen
them. He wrinkled his brow, contorted his face in
suffering. "Look here, Ward, I'll admit I've been rot-
ten at times, but I've always thought a lot of you at
bottom. Let's begin over. Let's get married, and
live some sort of life, a real life " He broke off as
he saw he was having no effect on Ward.
"It's too late," she whispered.
"What do you mean?"
"I can't. Don't you see? I'm changed."
"You mean you don't care any more? I know. I'll
make you care again."
"It isn't that." Her eyes were luminous. For a
moment he thought she was going to cry. But she
preserved her unnatural calm. "I do care. I love
you. I can't expect to make you understand. It's
just that I've realized it's a bad job. It's spoiled now.
No good. I can't imagine not loving you, but I know.
THE LOVE LEGEND 285
Don't ask me how, I just know that I can never marry
you, that I can't even see you any more."
"But that's nonsense. If you love me there's no
reason why we can't be friends even if we can't
marry."
It seemed to her that he was already fading, re-
ceding under her declaration of love. It registered for
future pain. Just then she was high above the cur-
rent of suffering, conscious of the dizzy depths below
to which she must inevitably fall, but buoyed up by
the mysterious strength that had come to her and was
making her break with Oz.
He took a turn around the small room irritably,
then came back and whirled her suddenly into his,
arms. His eyes looked pleadingly into hers, his arms
held her close, he bent his head . . .
Just so, she had felt in Rod's arms. She thoughtjj
Why not? Oz was Oz still, dear, lovable, handsome.
She yielded her lips gratefully, as one gulps water on
a hot day. It was what she wanted, what she needed
Oz.
"It's all right?" said Oz triumphantly, face illu-
mined.
"No!"
"But you do love me?"
"Nothing's changed. I always did. Kissing like
that can't change it "
"Ward, I can't understand you."
"Perhaps I don't understand very well myself. But
I know."
"Know what?"
"Know that this is the last."
They kissed passionately again. "I've never wanted
you like this, Ward." His voice was unsteady. His
body trembled.
286 THE LOVE LEGEND
"I know. It's just that it's too late." Something
of the sweet clarity of her tone infuriated him. It
seemed to him to be the good woman's eternal assump-
tion of superior virtue. Her mother must have used
that tone often to her father.
"Don't, then. Don't marry me. You think I'm a
rotter. Yes, you do. A cad. Let me tell you, young
woman, that you can thank your lucky stars that I'm
not. Do you think I haven't known that I could do
anything that I liked with you? You've given me
chance after chance to prove whether I was a cad or
not."
"You mean that I've trusted you," said Ward in a
voice so low that he could barely hear. She knew
that this would be the worst pain of all afterward.
Strangely it didn't hurt then.
"Oh, trusted me, yes. But, I mean that you've
given me opportunities that ninety-nine men out of a
hundred wouldn't have let slip by. And I've been
crazy about you, too. That's it. I've cared about you
too much. . ." He drifted into a maudlin, sentimen-
tal, partially true resume of their relations since their
meeting and of his feelings. He was passionately bent
on working on Ward's emotions with a highly colored
story of his own nobility of soul. He rambled on
through three paragraphs that might have been writ-
ten for him by one of the expert photographers of
spurious emotions whose works are so popular with
girls like Ward.
II
At the end Ward slipped off the ring and gave it to
him. "Goodby," she said. It seemed to her a fitting
thing to say. She felt curiously triumphant.
THE LOVE LEGEND 287
"Call a cab for me, will you?"
'Til go with you."
"No, oh no!"
"Promise me one thing. Call me up if you change
your mind?"
"All right." She would not change.
He stood at the door of the taxicab, smiling a pain-
ful smile. Their eyes met for the last time.
She sat upright in the jolting yellow car, wondering
how soon it would begin to hurt her. She was still
stimulated by the drama of the encounter. The phy-
sical comfort of his kiss still lingered like a drink of
warm liquor. How long would it be before she would
begin to think of the cruel things he had said to her?
Now, she saw only his face, distorted, unnatural.
As she turned in at the door of her rooms a wound
gashed her as if she had fallen on a sword. It was all
over now. She had no Oz. There was no Oz any-
more.
She threw herself across the bed in agony. If she
could only cry perhaps the bleeding pain would go
away for a minute, and let her think of something be-
sides. "Oz is gone, Oz is gone, Oz is gone."
Thank heaven she could be alone. Dizzy would
ask no questions. But she couldn't bear to see even
Dizzy. The fear got her to her feet, into her wraps
and out in the park.
She walked back and forth striving like an animal
at bay to ward off the agonized rendings that were
threatening. Thinking desperately of practical mat-
ters, focusing determinedly on trifles. Exterior ob-
jects seemed only shadowy outlines. Reality lay in
her thoughts. And she felt the necessity of keeping
away from reality.
And so she walked, a drugged person, deliberately
288 THE LOVE LEGEND
forcing back the sickness that was to engulf her. She
tramped on and on, her body cold, hungry, strained,
hoping for relief, knowing there was none.
At midnight she crept quietly home, threw herself
on the bed, and mercifully, paradoxically, slept.
As dawn broke she arose and undressed quietly.
Dizzy was asleep in the bed across the room, breath-
ing peacefully and evenly.
The chill morning air striking her body through
her thin crepe de chine night gown made her shiver.
With the shiver came a nervous reaction and tears.
She crept into bed, cold and sobbing with relief that
tears had come. For a few minutes she lay still.
Then she began to pray a nervous instinctive prayer,
"Dear God give me back my man. Dear God give me
back my man."
She heard Dizzy moving in bed. She pretended to
sleep. Dizzy rose quietly not to disturb her. Finally,
after an interminable interval in which she feigned
sleep, she was alone.
As the door shut on Dizzy and she was alone in the
apartment she burst into uncontrolled sobs. Only
when her body was shaken by paroxysms of grief did
she seem to get relief from the terrible weight that
was oppressing her. She sat up in bed and rocked
herself to and fro. "I think I am going insane," she
said to herself quietly, over and over. The rhythm of
it soothed her, she listened to her own voice, its quality
suddenly musical to her ears. "I think I am going in-
sane, I think I am going insane. I think I am going
insane." She lay quiet for a moment, while there was
a surcease of the pain that racked her. She turned
over in bed and writhed with anguish.
At last, it was unbearable to lie there any longer
thinking the same things over and over. She would
THE LOVE LEGEND 289
have to go out where there were people. There had
to be some help for her some place. She jumped out
of bed and turned the faucets in the bath tub. But as
the water splashed in the tub she knew that she could
never stay in the house long enough to bathe. She
drew on her stockings with quick, nervous hands.
There was just one idea in her mind. To get away
from the place where she had spent so much anguish.
Ill
Slipping on her clothes rapidly, she twisted her hair
up and pulled her hat down over her face. She did
not powder her nose, she could not wait to get out.
But she took a little silver powder case to use once she
was free of the house. As the door closed behind her
she realized that she had forgotten the key. It did not
matter. She wondered whether she would ever come
home again or not. She did not care.
She walked on for two blocks. The bright sunlight
brought her a little comfort in spite of herself. She
wondered what time it was. She thought about four
in the afternoon, judging from the time that had elapsed
since Dizzy left. She looked in a drug store window
at a clock. It was a quarter of eleven.
This revelation shocked her. "Oh, how will I get
through the days," she moaned to herself. "How will
I get through the days." When she had walked about
a mile she began to wonder where she was going. A
street car passing caught her eye and she boarded it.
It was full of greasy people who sickened her. She
got off after a few blocks and wandered forlornly
about. She seemed to feel better while she was mov-
ing. Sitting still she felt insanity coming near. After
another lapse of time when she was sure it must be
290 THE LOVE LEGEND
getting towards five she discovered that it was only
one-thirty. She again boarded a street car and went
down town.
She remembered that she had some shopping to do.
What was the use of shopping! She knew she would
have to get some sort of hold on herself. So she
forced herself into buying some little odds and ends
she needed. Food! Why, of course. She had had
nothing to eat since noon the day before. And she
had been hungry at four o'clock when she had seen
Oz. She had not eaten her sandwich and had not
thought of dinner. Breakfast and lunch-time had
passed since then. Perhaps her trouble was more than
half physical.
She went into a tea-room and ordered. It was in-
terminable waiting for her food to come. The hours
seemed to edge into her presence, grotesque writhing
mockeries, dragging their slow way across her vision.
All the rest of her life would go by like this with the
slow dead beat of a funeral march.
When the food came, she poked it with her fork.
It was disgusting. Why had she ordered it? She took
a mouthful, and choked. Her stomach rose. She
couldn't eat.
She paid her check and left. Two-thirty. What
next? A letter should tell her mother the news at
once. She couldn't bear to read another long senti-
mental essay from her mother on the joys of young
love.
There was a writing room near the tea room. She
tried to think what she would say.
"Dear Mother:
I am no longer engaged "
She tore the paper.
"Mother dear:
THE LOVE LEGEND 29 L
I have broken my engagement to Oz. After all he
is not the right man. I saw him yesterday having tea
with a very common sort of girl "
She paused. Was that the real reason she had done
it? Because of Miss Fluke? Jealousy? She laughed.
A mountain out of a molehill. She ought to have
known better. Her heart lightened like a bag of salt
passed through a stream of running water. She would
go and call him up at once. She could see him, stand-
ing bare-headed by the taxi-cab saying, "Call me up
if you change your mind, dear." She saw the wistful
boyish look in his eyes, the tight look at the corners
of his mouth. A flood of love rushed over her, and
she went precipitously for the telephone.
Receiver to her ear, she saw a flash of his face,
sneering, repelling, full of scornful sureness of her.
She dropped it and it dangled there by the phone
while she heard him saying, . . . "don't you think I
didn't know I could do anything I wanted with you
. . . I've never seen the woman yet . . ."
She walked slowly away. On the writing table she
had left her unfinished letter to her mother, and her
purse. She went steadily out of the shop, thinking
over the whole scene of the afternoon before, absorbed,
on and on, through the crowds.
IV
She was left without defenses. Dizzy had met a
very similar situation with two great weapons, a habit
of work, and decision of judgment. Ward had
neither. She had only the love legend. She had tried
honestly to mold her life to this far-flung ideal; agony
to the point of insanity was the result. If she had
disregarded it instinctively like Sari, or with intel-
292 THE LOVE LEGEND
lectual deliberation like Dizzy, or, realizing its charla-
tanism used it as a drape to cover her machinations
like Nita, the accepted and successful method, she
might have had a chance. As it was she found her-
self in the position of a man in a shipwreck who lets a
raft drift by in order to cling to a hand-carved grand-
father's clock. If she had been unbeautiful, like
Helene Partridge, she would still be waiting for her
man to come, loathing her home, hating her mother,
yet unbelievably credulous, turning more and more to
the popular novel, the moving picture which provides
a vicarious enjoyment, that becomes pathetically less
possible of realization year after year.
On Michigan avenue, Ward met a young man that
had paid her some attention. She saw in his eyes,
which were kind and friendly, that her appearance
shocked him. With a sort of enveloping tenderness
that many young men possess, he asked her to tea.
She accepted gratefully, and fled to the woman's room
of a hotel to look at herself in a mirror.
Her skin was white and drawn. It looked dry and
anaemic like the rabbit-shaped faces of a type of un-
dernourished girl. Her hair, unbrushed, came from
under her hat in pitiful wisps. Her lips were with-
out color.
Rouge! She could put on a quantity of rouge and
conceal her grief a little. She asked the maid for
some make-up, and washed her face vigorously. Then
she discovered that she had no money. Not even a
quarter for a tip. The maid was one of those caress-
ing young negro women, who must be descended from
old negro mammies. Ward left the room, resembling
THE LOVE LEGEND 293
the habitues of Peacock alley, and put her mind reso-
lutely on flirting with her escort.
She concentrated on the job in hand, and was able
to rid her mind sufficiently of her trouble to eat. The
young man, Billy Hammersmith, a well-groomed, well-
meaning youngster, was charmed and held. He didn't
guess that Ward had pinned her attention on him by
wrenching her thoughts into a position and holding
them there by sheer nervous energy. If she once
stopped flirting, she knew that she would cry.
And in the back of her mind somewhere was the
notion playing about with naughty abandon, like a
naked six-year-old in a public pool, that Oz might
come in, might see her there talking, laughing, enjoy-
ing herself.
VI
This idea dominated her in the days that followed.
She must go out. She must be seen in restaurants, in
dubs where Oz would be likely to go, motoring, walk-
ing in the park. She was acting a part every moment,
feeling Oz's eyes upon her somewhere in the crowd
all about her.
She gathered a string of undesirable males that kept
her continually busy. No one was too unattractive
for her smiles.
VII
She sat in a second-rate restaurant one night watch-
ing a dark, black-browed, purple lipped man with an
ochre complexion place his cheek against a girl, and
-294 THE LOVE LEGEND
carefully fit his middle-aged body to hers. He was
long and oily and slimp like a snake, and dark and
muddy-looking, like the deepest place in a stagnant
pool, and withal sleek and well-groomed as he shook
liis body in the sinuous shimmy, and allowed the sex
passion to dominate his face. And the girl, with eyes
like a baby waking from a nap, danced daintily and
easily as if she loved being in his arms.
Ward looked across the table at her own escort. A
toad, talking of ideals that he didn't have. She
watched his face as the music howled and amused her-
self by imitating his expressions so that she would not
have to listen to what he was saying.
She had let him order wine for her. She drank
until the outlines and images of the places merged
into the realities that were her thoughts. It was nebu-
lously amusing.
They got into a taxi and drove about the city.
Ward smoked cigarette after cigarette, laughing at the
lights along the lake front, repulsing with inward
mirth the efforts of the man with her to take her hand,
to make love to her. It was so funny that he didn't
know he wasn't really there. He was such a toad, and
so unimportant, and ridiculous.
And then a thought. The man who had shimmied,
the repulsive, livid-lipped dancer with the child in his
arms.
"I'm going home."
"Oh, but not yet."
"Take me home "
At home she slipped out of her clothes and into bed,
sobbing, begging heaven to strike her dead, writhing,
turning, taunted everywhere by that picture. And
the man was Oz, and she was the girl.
THE LOVE LEGEND 295
VIII
She wrote Anita.
"Oz and I have broken off forever. My heart is
just torn to pieces. I am going through a painful re-
adjustment. In spite of everything I still long for Oz
and want him. I think I would be willing to give up
everything for him. I wonder then, why I don't. Per-
haps I will. All those things we've talked over and
hoped for in married life hold me back. You got
them. I am glad. Sometimes I think I am a little in-
sane, I want him so much.
"I wonder why God doesn't send the right man to
me and let me marry him in peace. Today I have
been thinking that I will never marry. I will make a
way for myself with some sort of work and flirt my
way through life. Flirting is the only thing I can do
well.
"There is a struggle going on in me for ideals. Shall
I have ideals or not? They hurt. Life will be so much
easier and pleasanter without them, and after all what
does it matter? Why do we feel that we must have
them? To take away that curious flat taste that noth-
ing matters, I suppose. Oz chose the path of no
ideals. I know that now, and that's why we can't
marry. What is the real way to live? To let every-
thing roll off of you like water off a duck's back?
That is Oz's way.
"I am waiting for Billy Hammersmith to come and
take me out. I wish he would come so that I could
flirt with him. I must get some work to do, or else
flirt and flirt and flirt. There is no deep sort of satis-
faction for me in life any place.
296 THE LOVE LEGEND
"Please tell mother about it. I can't write about it
just yet. Don't show her this letter.
"Love,
"WARD."
"P. S. Tear this up."
CHAPTER V
DIZZY facing suffering similar to Ward's battered it
down with her unfathomable energy. She did not in-
vestigate her own feelings hourly as Ward did. She
was too contemptuous of the love-sick young girl at-
titude; her self-confidence was sufficient to carry her
through to the time she knew was coming when Jim's
glamour would have faded.
She finished her novel, and prepared to go east to
assault the long-suffering Hopkins, oracle for all the
Dizzys of this generation.
She did not see Jim before she left. Her fortitude
was unbelievable to Ward, who still begged her to take
Jim back.
"No. Any love of mine would be short-lived, any-
way," Dizzy said with a conviction back of her tones
that almost amounted to bragging. "By this time I
have so completely analyzed my feelings for Jim that
I am content without a glimpse of him. He's a beau-
tiful dream and I'm glad it happened. But after all,
my work means more to me."
"But Dizzy, I should think he could help you in
your work. I mean the experience. I should think it
would make your life richer, give you more under-
standing. If you actually married Jim! After all it's
a girl's greatest experience, isn't it? And you could
turn your love for him into your work, I should think.
Just as you have your suffering "
297
298 THE LOVE LEGEND
"I have not turned my suffering into work," Dizzy
snapped. "Oh Heavens, Ward! The sublimated love
view of art! I refuse to countenance it this turned
into other channels idea. It's anaemic. Old-maidish!
Woman-writerish! I suffer about my work just as
strongly, just as abstractly as I do about the man I
want. I believe that each moment of the day is sepa-
rated from the other by the dominating interest of
the moment. I am no more love-sick when I think
about my novel than when I eat. The weather in-
fluences my mood more than the need of a lover. Of
course that is because I refuse to symptomize my soul
as most young women do, and take stock of pains con-
tinually. And because I am not razzled and titillated
by the abstract idea of love. And you, Ward, have no
business to entertain such thoughts. Love is a mun-
dane business, and to get inspiration from realistic
source for art is not like you."
Ward was a little bewildered, a little hurt. She felt
that out of her greater experience she could advise
Dizzy, but it was evident that Dizzy was merely con-
temptuous of her experience with men. She saw her
off for New York alone, as Sari sent a note at the last
moment saying that the Custard Pie players opening
prevented her from coming to the station. She con-
cluded her message:
"For thirty traitorous seconds I wanted to go east
with you, when I finally realized you were going. It's
been my dream for so long. I woke up Cecil and told
him, after you telephoned. There was a heavy silence
for a moment then he said, are you going with her?
I sa id No! Why would I want to go with her? He
heaved a sigh of relief and went back to sleep. Next
day he begged me in tones that didn't sound convinc-
THE LOVE LEGEND 299
ing to go with you, and he'd come later with the babies.
Gee, I wish I could see you off!
Love, SARI."
II
Ward left the Union station a little more blue than
usual. Her mood was damp, soppy, disagreeable, with
an element of self-disgust that took away the slightly
voluptuous feeling of faint enjoyment that she some-
times had in this period of painful brooding over Oz.
A heart-broken Jim called her on the telephone al-
most as soon as she got back to the apartment. He
wanted the solace of her company that evening. She
invited him to take her to the opening of the Custard
Pie Players, and Sari's debut as Sudermann's "Mar-
got."
Bewilderment was marking a definite line between
Jim's brows that was never to leave him. He was
unable to understand Dizzy, and had hoped up to this
day that a young girl's caprice was keeping them
apart. He had bought books on economics, labor, so-
cialism, syndicalism, the Russian Soviet, and tried
painfully to get through them. They puzzled him,
and shocked him, and upset his standards. Life was
no longer simple and easy. The formula work hard
and marry a nice girl and happiness will mathemati-
cally result was not going to work in his case. A
dim bitterness colored the constant attempt to think
outside the grooves in which he had always thought.
In addition to his suffering at the loss of Dizzy, his
consciousness throbbed unmercifully with the brain
muddle the talks with her had brought on.
His conversation to Ward, disjointed, dressed mea-
300 THE LOVE LEGEND
gerly in an appearance of impersonality, reflected his
hopeless mental tangle.
"Do you think that when a girl and a man disagree
about some question that it's serious? I mean do you
think it matters in a love affair if people don't happen
to hold all the same opinions? Now I believe in being
broad-minded "
Ward gave him a superficial attention and answered
his questions mechanically.
Ill
The lower floor of the Custard Pie Club was filled
with people. Jane Austin, a girl with hair cut short
and in men's clothes, sat sulkily taking in dollars, her
sullen eyes challenging a combat with anyone who
cared to take her on. Small nuclei of Custard Pie
types clotted here and there, were stared at by the
larger groups who had come to be stirred by the un-
conventional, possibly immoral. A big-busted Jewess,
clothed in velvet and furs, kept her small, tortoise-
shell-spectacled husband close to her as she watched
Janet Millwright and Raleigh Minster seated at a
small table, deep in conversation. Janet, garbed in
the lavenders and smoke colors she loved, had tucked
into her pale hair half a dozen cheap rose colored
ostrich plumes, whose color, repeated in her lips, gave
her a splendid, bizarre luxurious aspect that all the
expensive clothes of the large woman had not been
able to bring. Janet was smoking, and Raleigh, in a
purple tarn, was leaning across the table, looking into
her eyes, and now and then taking a puff from her
cigarette.
Another outraged spectator of that scene was Mrs.
Partridge of Lakeshore. Helene, too, her body half
THE LOVE LEGEND 301
turned away from them, was watching them obliquely.
All her most secret impulses were roused and she
feared to be seen watching them; yet in looking away
she inflicted a cruelty on herself as painful as the
snatching of a hungry baby from its mother's breast.
She looked back again and again, until Raleigh and
Janet, ardent Freudians always on the lookout for
examples of sex inhibitions, noticed her.
"Let's give her a real thrill!"
They leaned closer across the table and kissed, a
long kiss, probably only enjoyable for its histrionic
value.
As Helene watched, the sex currents were stirred
like a muddy pool in a wind storm, while she suffered
intensely from shame and disgust. For a part of a
moment she admitted to herself that she would like
to be Janet. It was not so much an admission as a
revelation, glimpsed, dying at the breath of her con-
scious thought; she was as honestly desirous as Ward
of gaining a perfect mate romantically.
IV
"Oh, there's Ward!" Janet smiled and held out her
hand, radiating her distinction with the expression
and gesture. "Do come here. We're having such an
important discussion about matrimony!"
Jim and Ward were drawn to form a circle. Jim
had gallantly met Miss Millwright before. Janet
ignored him for Ward. Raleigh offered a cigarette.
"You see, we're discussing the value of illusions in
matrimony. We've about come to the conclusion that
men have to have a set of romantic standards to go
on, but that women don't need them."
The discussion was beyond Jim. Ward had a sud-
302 THE LOVE LEGEND
den flash of thought but it was gone before she knew
what it was. The idea interested her.
"You see, women are unconsciously exploiters of
sentiment and romanticism," said Janet, reciting the
latest bit she had picked up somewhere in her reading
or conversation, with a brilliant but false effect of
having given the subject some thought. "The aver-
age girl realizes that to keep her husband chaste the
strongest weapon she has is his own romantic feelings
about the splendor of a faithful husband. She plays
up to that and invests the role with such an attractive
moral color that the average man is perfectly safe in
the gaudiest house of prostitution!"
Jim blushed. Raleigh leaned over the table and
shook his head admiringly at Janet. "You sure do get
things, Janet. I can't help agreeing with you."
"Yes. The American girl is great at exploiting sen-
timentality and phony romanticism."
The flash come to Ward again. Anita! She sighted
a vague form in the background of her mind. Was
that the difference between Anita and her? On the
surface they were alike, talking about their ideals,
believing in them did Anita believe in them? Some-
how these school-girl ideals had served Anita, while
Ward had been the slave of them. Was Anita like the
girl Janet described?
"I almost get what you mean," Ward said. "But
don't you think that sometimes a girl herself is duped
by this sentimentality "
This was a new tack for Janet. She switched the
subject.
"You see Raleigh and I find the subject especially
piquant because we were just married this afternoon!"
Married! Oh! And exclamations! Ward and
Jim both came forward with the conventional greet-
THE LOVE LEGEND 303
ings. Jim was especially warm. It relieved him to
know that this friend of Dizzy's was saved. Janet
and Raleigh weariedly accepted congratulations.
"It's really nothing," said Janet. "It was just more
convenient for Raleigh to have a wife going around
with him on some of his tours than just a girl. Some
people objected, you know, and he couldn't get an en-
gagement to speak before the Hammond Woman's
Club. So we decided to get married. I distribute
pamphlets, you know."
Ward murmured something. Janet patronizingly
said that she had to leave as she was going to be on
in the third act. She went to the back of the club and
disappeared up the stairs.
Helene had been watching the encounter, longing
to come forward, held back by self -consciousness. But
Ward saw her.
"Oh Helene! I'm so glad to see you." They kissed.
"My dear, I heard that you were engaged. Is it
true?"
Ward flushed. "Oh, no. Just another rumor, I
guess."
"They float around everywhere."
But the comment had jerked Ward back into the
land dominated by Oz again. She began to be ani-
mated, to laugh, and turn here and there, excitedly
acting her usual part to the imaginary Oz somewhere
in the crowd.
A group moved toward the door. It was eight-
thirty. The curtain upstairs was scheduled to rise at
eight-fifteen. The crowd, sheep-like, followed the
304 THE LOVE LEGEND
leading group at the door and the audience filed up-
stairs and took their places on the stiff benches.
The orange curtains were drawn back and had de-
veloped a hitch. Tex was swearing at them and try-
ing to pull them together. He glared fiercely down
at the crowd.
"What're yez all doin' up here now?" he shouted
furiously. "Ain't ye got no manners? Where was ye
brung up? Git out o' here! Git! Git! Git!" He
batoned a hammer over their heads.
A general movement backward started. Tex, ham-
mer in hand, advanced on them threateningly. "I'll
teach ye. Comin' up here before you're told! Git the
Hell out, I tell you. Git! Git! Git! Yez are all of
ye crazy with the heat. Git the Hell!"
They stampeded down the stairs, Tex following
them to the head of the well belligerently. Then he
went back to the curtains.
Sari, dressed for her part, beckoned Ward into her
apartment. "He's simply going nutty. Everything is
going wrong," she said giggling. "My dear, it's an
absolute scream. Tex got a girl from the west to come
and paint the scenes, that girl with the short cut hair
that was taking in the tickets. Her name is Jane
Austen, and she's the wildest thing! She's even made
Janet take notice.
"The first scene is supposed to be the interior of an
Irish hut, you know. She's been painting in California
and she's supposed to be an expert, the latest thing in
little theater settings. So Tex and Pat told her to go
on ahead, after she had read the play. Well, my dear,
she painted her idea of the interior of an Irish hut, and
it was simply one nude woman after another, just as
close together as she could squeeze them, on the back
THE LOVE LEGEND 305
drop. Of course we had to make her paint it out and
she's furious."
"But what did the nude women have to do with the
Irish hut?"
"That's what nobody knows, but she's absolutely
furious with the whole bunch of us about it, and es-
pecially with me, because I laughed. To complicate
matters Tex is awfully struck with her, and it looks
like an affair. And now the curtain won't go together
and it's nearly half an hour after time to open, and
Pat is in hysterics."
Outside they could hear Tex stamping across the
theater and downstairs into the hall where the crowd
waited. "Yez can come on up, now," they heard him
say.
When the crowd had gathered, the manager of the
Custard Pie Club made the opening speech. In a blue
denim shirt open at the throat, and soiled from much
hard stage carpentering, he stood against the orange
curtains to say:
"Yez are all a pack of crazy damn fools! The lot
of you! None of ye was brung up right, and it
wouldn't ha' done no good if yez had been. You're
crazy in the first place or yez wouldn't be here; and
so if ye don't like it ye can just git out right now!"
This opening restored his good humor.
"This here's a new art movement and it ain't com-
mercial. It's a swell new art movement, and we got a
lot of professionals here that has got Blanche Bates
and Sarah Bernhardt backed off the boards. And we
got the swellest scene painter ye ever seen, the swellest
blind scene painter in the country. She paints scenes
for blind people. She come down from California, and
she's painted some of the swellest settings ye ever
seen!"
806 THE LOVE LEGEND
He gurgled in his throat, choked and went on.
"Now them crazy damn fools that come up here
before they was wanted are a bunch of nuts, and
they'd better git to Hell and back before they try anjT
of them tricks on me agin! See? Now listen, if you
don't like this here show it's because you've got no
artistic sense. The actors have all worked hard and
they're a swell bunch. First, they're going to give a
fine Irish play by this here bird ... I forgit his
name. Then 'Margot,' by Sudermann, and the last
of all a play named 'Cocaine,' by Pendleton King,
which has never been given in this city before. In
fact none of the plays has been give here by any little
the-ay-ter. And this here is the best little the-ayter
you ever seen, and if you don't think so, it's because
you're all a pack of damn fools."
After this propitiatory sibilation he tactfully with-
drew into the orange curtains, saying to the actors on
the stage in a voice perfectly audible to the audience:
"There! That's the way to interdoose a new art
movement."
VI
The Irish play, interspersed with many long
speeches delivered in oratorical fashion, made every
honest soul in the audience either fidgety or sleepy be-
fore it even hinted at a climax. A few intense maidens,
chins hitched forward, believing themselves to be im-
proving mentally each moment, deluded themselves
into a kind of interest. The curtain fell on scattered
applause.
Sudermann's play, set in a lawyer's office, was next
on the program. At the last moment Sari discovered
that a group of pictures that were to represent the
THE LOVE LEGEND 307
women the lawyer had loved, which had been pur-
chased that afternoon at the ten-cent store, had been
carefully arranged by Jane Austen in regular order,
one in the center of each panel, to look like decora-
tions on part of the wall paper. Realizing that her
lines were spoiled unless they were grouped together,
Sari hastily pulled them down from the wall and placed
them on a table in a corner.
As her cue came to go on, a hard determined hand
gripped her by the shoulder. "You little fool. You
little simpering fool, you've gone and spoiled my deco-
rations. You've gone and spoiled my idea. My ef-
fect"
Sari, trembling with excitement, wrenched herself
free. She ran towards the entrance to the stage and
managed to get on only a second late.
She went through her lines steadily, until she came
to her biggest scene when she was to break down and
cry. She had just seated herself to open on the climax
when a shrill voice at the back of the house distracted
the attention of everyone.
"Listen! Just listen! She's a wonderful actress!
I'll say she is ! That accent. Where she got that Eng-
lish accent kills me! Raised in the Ghetto and got an
English accent! Spoiling my whole scene by bunch-
ing those pictures! My God! She has no idea of
art! She tries to spoil every scene I do. Oh my God,
that voice!"
It was the implacable Jane Austen. Someone seized
her and carried her out screaming. This brightened
up the audience which waited the third play, "Co-
caine," with some hope of amusement.
Cocaine was the play that Dizzy and Jim had dif-
fered about. It is a conversation in a bedroom be-
tween two cocaine addicts, one a prostitute, the other
308 THE LOVE LEGEND
an ex-prize fighter. Their decision to end their lives
is frustrated by the turning off of the gas meter for
failure to pay the gas bill. Janet had rehearsed the
part tragically; she liked herself as an abandoned wo-
man, futile even in death. She had talked much
about the sublime irony of it.
But as she came dragging wearily in her entrance
was greeted by the hysterical laughter of the audience.
Pat's opening speech, given in a high-pitched cackling
voice, brought down the house. Every line drew a
gale of merriment. Pat, an old actor, made the most
of his lines and played them for their full comedy
value. Poor Janet struggled on, growing more tragic
every moment. The heavier her tragedy, the more
the audience laughed. It was the hit of the evening.
Janet was furious. Raleigh and she made a number
of remarks about the badness of Pat's performance,
and the cheap tricks he had used to get laughs. But
Cocaine played at the Custard Pie Club every night
for two months, while other plays came and went.
VII
"That sort of thing may be all right," said Jim on
the way home, "but it's not my idea "
"No, it isn't mine, either!"
"I've been in rotten places, seen my share of bad
things, I suppose, but for sheer filth, dirt, rottenness "
he stopped for words. "Well, it's not my idea. In
a way I wish Dizzy could have been there so she could
have seen but I'm glad she wasn't. I wouldn't want
her to have gone through it. Really, I blush. I don't
know. Perhaps I should have taken you home!"
For the first time in her life Ward failed to be
thrilled by the thought of being protected like a beau-
THE LOVE LEGEND 309
tiful flower by a strong man the American ideal.
She wondered why Jim didn't thrill her more and make
her regret Dizzy's decision over again. "He is rather
stupid, I'm afraid. I wonder why Dizzy liked him in
the first place "
CHAPTER VI
WARD still kept the apartment. Leaving town was
more than she could bear. Without the stimulation of
an imaginary Oz in the crowd about her, she felt that
she could not live. If she walked down Michigan ave-
nue, she had the feeling that she might meet him, that
he saw her from the window of a club, that he was
coming around the corner.
Wherever she dined he sat at the table just behind
her, or else would come in the next moment. And she
never was rewarded with even a fleeting glimpse of the
real Oz. He made no sign. She wrote him three let-
ters but tore them all up before they reached the mail
box, and almost called him up more than once.
She had moments of happiness. Dazzling, intense
moments, when her unhappiness seemed to lift, as heat
will be pulled off the shoulder on a scorching day if
one goes into a cool cellar. The heavenly relief of the
contrast made her hilarious with joy. She would sing,
and dance about her room if she were alone, or bound
gayly along the street.
One morning she awoke with the electric current of
happiness running through her. She jumped out of
bed, singing, bathed like a young robin in spring, tak-
ing delight in the feel of the water, her spirits glowing
with her blood, as she rubbed herself. Dressing was
a game, and when a huge bunch of pink sweet peas
from Billy Hammersmith was delivered, she jumped
about like a vivacious child before a Christmas tree,
310
THE LOVE LEGEND 311
or a moving picture actress registering bliss of an
extreme sort.
Out into the bright sunshine of the morning, cor-
saged by her pink flowers, she strode, a young battle-
ship, weaponed with all the devices of nature and
youth. Beauty, health, vigor she felt them all as she
had never been conscious of them before; and as each
step snapped on the pavement she was emotionally
luxuriating in her happiness, shutting out past and
future, wanting nothing, yet knowing that it could
not last, like a child at a matinee.
Dearborn street brimmed with morning. Squat
ugly houses leering with a whimsical and dusty gran-
deur of thirty years ago made the parade a thin paper
mask of two dimensions. Back of it lay a solidness of
joy, happiness, the flash and glitter of sunny days
which transuded the scene with rainbow sequins.
Boarding houses, bawdy houses, even refuges for
Christian young women oozed the silver and gold liq-
uid of her contentment.
She was free of it free of the pain. And life with-
out the heavy blackness that had held her was very
sweet.
The slate-grey outline of buildings, the giant snor-
ing of the Loop, the blackened powder of the streets
in her nostrils elated her with the idea of approach.
She seemed to soar along going somewhere going
somewhere. The sea-green river crossed, she pushed
her way head-high through clusters of soiled swarthy
men, vaguely exotic. Here two men shoved a box of
round moon-colored grapefruit "Some baby!' ; And
here four men stopped bullying a profound-looking
horse that resembled Woodrow Wilson to look their
fill at Ward crossing South Water street. And Ward,
looking up, smiled into the eyes of a frankly imperti-
312 THE LOVE LEGEND
nent lad who had asked, "Where'dja git the flowers,
kid?"
II
Luncheon time found her across the table from a
cunctuous Scotchman.
"I'm happy today and it's so wonderful," she told
him.
He looked at her with careful deliberation.
"You're not happy," he said slowly, "don't tell me
you're happy. You've got a sad smile."
Tears sprang to Ward's eyes. Suffocating, spider-
web bands like twisted black chiffon were binding her
once more, chaining her from happiness. What a ficti-
tious, unreal sort of feeling it had been. Under her
eyes the skin was lavender velvet.
"Why did you say that to me?"
"You are very unhappy?"
An impulse to luxuriate in confession came. But
crowding on it was a pain so intense that she clung to
the table Oz, Oz, Oz. The sympathy in the eyes
across the table was unbearable. Why couldn't she
have Oz to comfort her in her pain! The emotion
reached its apex, the crisis declared itself, her inner
forces gave way under the heavy burden, dragged by
great clots of sadness. She leaned forward in her
chair in such a state of depression that her mind was
blank. Lifeless, she lost the capacity for pain in a
moment of vacuum, until in sharp recovery she buried
her face in her hands and gave way to body-racking
sobs.
A second of exquisite physical relief followed each
sob. Self-pity overwhelmed her. Sitting still became
impossible.
THE LOVE LEGEND 313
"I must go you must excuse me." She got up and
left the restaurant for the street.
Movement always left relief. In the crowds, run-
ning against each other, meaninglessly walking this
way and that, she became a particle, running into fat
men, bumping girls, pricking and being pricked with
elbows, flying aimlessly, swiftly away from something
that was always with her, ahead of her. She began to
push the air before her with her hands as if her pain
was something physical, something outside herself that
she could clear away.
On and on she walked, pushing, pushing, pushing.
Ill
And then one twilight, when the streets had cleared
of the day's crowds, Ward saw Oz on Michigan boule-
vard. He passed her hurrying. Her faculties seemed
to suspend.
"Oz!"
He walked swiftly on. The set of his head was the
same. His walk same old walk, jaunty, youthful,
debonair, like a forty-year-old actor who plays college
boy parts. She loved him so. She almost ran as she
followed him, waiting for him to turn around. Surely
he knew she was there, surely, surely. It was so plain
and so real that they were both there together. He
would have to turn around in a moment. She almost
overtook him, then fell back. He must turn around.
But he hurried on in a fresh spurt and she had to go
ahead swiftly not to lose him.
The swinging doors of a men's club. "Oz!" And
he was gone.
Her spirit slackened. It couldn't be true. Every-
thing had seemed about to come right, and then he
314 THE LOVE LEGEND
was inside the club and she was outside. Always out-
side.
Her mood came rushing with the force of a panic.
She forgot about her engagement for dinner and hur-
ried, hurried, hurried back to the hotel.
He didn't hear, he didn't hear! Didn't he hear?
Didn't he see? Didn't he know? How could he help
feeling that she was there? She threw herself on the
bed and prayed out loud, a sobbing hysterical prayer.
IV
She sobbed until her body grief was spent. And
then her spirit searched relief again, a way out, a way
out. Some place a door must open; she could not bear
the pain. She rose and turned on the light beside her
small mirror. Her hair outlined her head in ragged,
unnatural patches, like wild underbrush on the edge of
some remote river.
Oh the pity of it, the cruelty of the story of the per-
fect prince. The prince, the prince, the perfect prince,
the prince of her fairy tale. Her fairy tale! How piti-
ful. The cruelty, the agony Oh!
A little child, she thought, must learn there is no
Santa Claus, now she must come to find there was no
prince. The gleaming rose-pink story that was to be
her life had turned a dull and rusty gray. It mocked
her like a grinning fiend. See me, it said, see me!
Ha, ha, a prince? A fairy prince who loves his liquors,
loves his food, his princely self far more than you!
And women, too, perhaps. . . .
The love legend brought her surcease. Oz could
not be the hero of that. So hope rose, bedizened, a
fabric of cheese cloth to shield her a time from her
pain.
THE LOVE LEGEND 315
One night she dined with Mortimer Glosser at the
club on Michigan boulevard where Oz lived. Her
spirit waited on tip-toe for him to enter. Conscious of
her own beauty, sick with fear of encountering Oz's
eyes at last, she walked through the soon-to-be crapu-
lent crowds who were celebrating the last gala night
of some unimportant festivities that had lasted as long
as a Normandy wedding.
Oz, Oz, Oz, somewhere in that throng of dining,
laughing people, his eyes had surely found her. She
kept her head high and turned neither to the right
nor left. If she should see him!
They found their table. Ward pretended to eat
while Mortimer engorged himself. Here a housewife,
richly hung with garments of a courtesan, was red-
faced from much good living. Her attendant, an un-
fed looking man, monastic in a suit of primeval even-
ing clothes, watched the scene with mordant eyes.
And over here blonde girls laughed, and fat men leered.
And pallid thin men, liquorless, scattered through the
room, were caped in dull and gloomy thoughts as if
they meant to spend the night with melancholy: every-
where were stiff men, pompous men, ugly small fea-
tured, or repulsively massive men but no Oz.
Then said Mortimer Glosser: "I hear your friend
Oz is to be married."
Like a bucket falling into a well to pull against its
chain, her heart plunged, then caught itself.
Brows lifted, nostrils tightened, she wondered if she
showed emotion in her face. Suddenly her nerves
steadied. She felt certain of control.
"Married?"
316 THE LOVE LEGEND
"Yeah. Woman he's known for years. Childhood
sweetheart or something!"
Ward's eyebrows asked, What do you mean?
"She's a widow. Oz used to be in love with her
when she was a girl. She married a man named
Marchrose, and they didn't get along. When she di-
vorced him, everyone thought she'd marry Oz, but she
married a man with several millions instead. She
didn't get along with him either. I guess it was a case
of marrying not wisely but too well."
He stopped to let this attempted epigram ink itself
permanently on the conversation. Ward managed a
smile.
"Well, so this second husband obligingly gets him-
self jammed up in an automobile accident, toddles off
to a hospital and quietly dies, leaving all his money
to Oz."
"Oz?"
"Well, Oz gets it. He leaves it to his widow, and
she promptly offers it and self to Oz, who accepts it
gratefully!"
"It's rather warm in here isn't it." Ward said the
first inane thing she could think of. "Have you been
out to the dunes again?"
His favorite subject, the Indiana sand dunes, where
he liked to go and spend week ends.
He talked for some time while Ward sat thinking of
means to get away.
And then Oz was standing by the table looking down
at her. Feeling as if she were inhaling ether she held
out her hand, smiled.
"You're looking very charming as usual in that
black gown."
She was able to produce an imitation badinage.
"Yes, it's the same old gown."
THE LOVE LEGEND 317
"As usual! I referred to you, charming you, not
the gown."
She lifted her eyes courageously and for a second
each saw the essence of the other, the inherent secret
existence of both revealed itself until the terrible eter-
nity blurred, ended.
Oz was gone.
Ward, in a daze, went on with her dinner. The
final humiliation had come. Oz knew her shameful
mental pursuit of him.
He knew. Even the splendor -of that last parting
was tawdry. There was nothing left.
And he was going to marry a woman of whom she
had never heard.
CHAPTER VII
LATER, while they were dancing, she saw Jim How-
ells. When the music stopped he crossed the ball
room delightedly, but stopped anxiously before her.
"What's the matter, don't you feel well?"
"I'm a little dizzy. I've caught cold perhaps. . . ."
"Say, you'd better go home. You look ready to
drop."
She was conscious of a nebulous wonder about Oz.
Had he noticed. . . .? Had he noticed . . . had he
noticed . . . what? She couldn't think. This must
be insanity ... or maybe death . . . She couldn't
think. . . . Everything had happened to her . . .
the last cruel thing had happened . . . Oz knew . . .
the prince had ridden away . . . leaving her alone by
the roadside, unfit . . . she couldn't suffer anything
more, anything worse. . . .
n
A nurse was bending over her, Dr. Smart was stand-
ing beside her. She opened her tired eyes wider to
take in the white and green room where she lay.
"Am I in a hospital?"
The nurse handed a thermometer to the doctor.
"Well, my girl, since you ask me, you are in a
hospital," said Dr. Smart. She closed her eyes.
"What's the matter with me?" she asked after about
318
THE LOVE LEGEND 319
three days of rest, surprised to see that the doctor and
nurse were still standing there.
"You've been sick," said the doctor smiling. "Now,
Ward, be a good girl and don't ask questions until
you're feeling better. You're going to be all right."
She closed her eyes thankfully. How wonderful
Doctor Smart was. Really some one ought to tell him
what a good doctor what a comfort she hadn't
much voice, but that at least was due him after all he
had done for her.
"Dr. Smart," she said weakly, "you're a good doc-
tor!"
Again she sank to rest. This time she slept for five
days, she thought, and woke to find the doctor and
nurse still there. Dr. Smart was a good doctor. Some
one ought to tell him.
"Dr. Smart, you're a good doctor!"
There. That was done. Now she could rest. Dr.
Smart would take care of her. You could depend on
him. If only if only God were like Dr. Smart.
Ill
As soon as her temperature was normal Sari came
to see her.
"Jim Howells brought you home, raving. You
talked and talked about black chiffon bands that were
binding you. I called Dr. Smart and he took you to a
hospital at once."
"Did I make a complete fool of myself at the club?"
"I don't think so. Ward, you couldn't make a fool
of yourself. You remind me of Cecil's cousin Roger
who boasts that he's a gentleman even when he's
drunk. He told me that even under the influence of
320 THE LOVE LEGEND
liquor he simply couldn't do an indelicate thing . . .
well . . . you'd have to see him to be really amused
at that. But I don't believe anyone noticed anything.
You know Jim and his tact. He even got Mortimer
Glosser, that old fish, to thinking you were all right."
"Jim is a dear." Her eyes filled with weak tears.
Cloud-like thoughts of herself and Jim, of Oz and
Dizzy were faintly sad like music heard over hills
caped in twilight. It was all over about Oz. In her
white bed, she felt safe from all those racking, tortur-
ing past weeks.
She went to sleep smiling.
IV
She found a room in a hotel very near to Sari and
Cecil and took her meals with them. She spent long
hours with the babies in the park. And she walked
and walked by herself, thinking, thinking.
Tramping through the park in the crisp fall after-
noons she thought over her whole life, and tried to
think why she alone of the four girls had failed to find
happiness. . . Were the other girls happy? She
wondered. Did Dizzy unbearably want Jim? No, or
she would have taken him. Still, she had had a chance
to take Oz. What then? An ideal. They had both
dung to ideals. The love legend, after all, had meant
more to her than any individual. Yes, that was so,
and avoiding the hero of the legend had meant more to
Dizzy than Jim. Her re-action against it had carried
her too far. She should have married Jim. . . .
But her mind was drifting off the subject. She must
come back to herself . . ideals . . illusions. That
THE LOVE LEGEND 321
was what had been wrong with her. Too many senti-
mental illusions. . . .
Coming in from her walk she said something like
this to Sari.
"No, I can't believe you've lost your illusions,
Ward," Sari answered. "You couldn't. You wouldn't
be you, without ideals."
"People are cluttered with illusions that in order to
become successful and happy they have to lose," said
Ward. "Once lost they are free to think clearly and
fight their way to the top."
"Perhaps," Sari had agreed. "But once they get to
the top they build a new set of illusions if they are the
sort that had them in the first place. I don't believe
I ever had any."
"I don't think you did, either. Neither did Dizzy.
Just Anita and I. We always talked about our ideals,
and aspirations, and we were always so sure that if
you did as you were told you would ultimately find
your prince and live happily ever afterward."
"Nita never really believed that. She only pre-
tended to. You notice that any sentimental notion or
conscientious scruple never kept Nita from doing
exactly as she pleased. And don't you remember how
popular she always was with the sort of girl that
needed an ideal to worship. And how contemptuous
she really was of them, and yet how she led them on
and fed their admiration for her. She used sentimen-
tality. Held herself above it, and dished it out the
way Dizzy says the capitalists do to the working
classes to hold them in subjection. Propaganda and
publicity are Nita's specialties."
"Of course, in a way, Nita's been the most success-
ful of any of us."
322 THE LOVE LEGEND
"Oh well, if you call that success. I don't. She's
simply achieved a place where she's well-fed, well
taken care of, and doesn't have to do too much work.
A lot of idiots probably look up to her. They always
did and they always will. She works hard enough to
get their admiration and she ought to have it. How-
ever, I consider that all the rest of us amount to much
more than Nita. You, Ward, of course, have always
been the dupe of guff. Dizzy deliberately and intel-
lectually was never deceived by any of the things
mother taught us. And I just knew, without think-
ing, that it was all bunk. I used to watch you making
boys fall for you. I realize now that you did it uncon-
sciously, but I used to imagine that you had myster-
ious wiles, and imitate some of your tricks. I had no
belief that men would fall for me unless I made them.
And it used to make me peeved that I couldn't make
them. But I never had any notion that it was because
my real prince would come along and make life a
bunch of roses. I never even thought of Cecil in that
way. He was just something new. The babies were
never little flowers given me as a sacred gift from on
high. They were just little nuisances to be borne with
as best one could, and take care of because they were
helpless and it was unfair not to. And I got to love
them, and I got to love Cecil. I didn't love him when
I married him because I was incapable of it. But we
went through so many experiences together that now I
couldn't do without Cecil. He means more to me than
fun or work, or any of the things that used to occupy
my thoughts."
It wasn't often that Sari stopped in her headlong
flight through life to state her views as fully as this.
Ward had been very receptive. It all jibed in with
her formulating philosophy.
THE LOVE LEGEND 323
But Sari herself was still cherishing the illusion that
she was going to become a star on Broadway. Jim
Stein of the Times, whom she had met through Dizzy,
had written a play in which she was to act at the Cus-
tard Pie Club. Jim had said she was just the type to
portray his character a little ribbon clerk who de-
cides that she'd rather be a prostitute. Cecil's aunt's
husband, who was the Chicago representative of some
well known New York producers, had agreed to come
and see Sari act. If it went well, Jim was going to do
it into a three-act play and Sari was going to star in it.
On opening night the Custard Pie little theater pro-
gressed through two acts in its usual manner. And
then out came Sari, and went through her lines for
some moments very well. Then a hoarse raucous noise
distracted the audience, and three clown faces ap-
peared at the window. Three drunken men had pro-
cured step ladders and had climbed up to see the show
without paying admission. The audience went into
gales of merriment. The three men went through the
usual asinine performance so amusing to any mob.
Sari struggled on through her tragic lines while Tex
Flynn, ever awake to opportunities for publicity, could
be heard through the uproar saying to the ever
present reporters: "Come right in, boys, and I'll
give you the story. It's the best story you ever
seen."
Sari went doggedly through the scene, while the
ironic Jim Stein lines brought tears of joy to the
audience as they were answered by the three garish
faces staring barbaresquely, bodilessly in. When she
324 THE LOVE LEGEND
had finished, she walked across the theater heavily
and into her rooms.
Once more, she had lost out. Cecil's uncle would
be terribly disgusted. She had not waited for his ver-
dict.
VI
Ward decided to go to her mother in California.
There was nothing to keep her in Chicago any more.
CHAPTER VIII
WARD sat looking out of the window of the moving
train. Motion, changing landscape, the pleasant glare
of the late afternoon sunlight exhilarated her. She
had the sense of holding all of life's wisdom in her lap.
Soothed by the sense of going forward, she planned
her life. At last, she thought, I am going ahead on
clear, definite lines.
Across the aisle Tin-tin sat in Olive's lap playing
with a chain of red and green beads that the old wo-
man wore around her neck. Cecil Jr. slept gracefully
opposite them. Ward smiled into Olive's eyes the
woman of her mother's generation, yet so unlike her
mother as different as she was from Dizzy or Sari
from Nita. Yet people were continually talking about
the modern girl as if she could be made into a com-
posite photograph.
The decision to bring the babies along had been
sudden as sudden as the unexpected success of Cecil
and Sari.
The disastrous premiers of Jim Stein's play had had
a surprising back-fillip. Cecil's aunt's husband had
called up the next day, radiant with enthusiasm. He
was anxious to put the thing on the Orpheum circuit,
as he considered it one of the funniest things he had
ever seen. He wanted some sort of drunken interrup-
tion to add the touch that had been given it on the
325
326 THE LOVE LEGEND
opening night and remembering Cecil's talent for play-
ing any instrument known to the world of jazz, he had
suggested that Cecil come on, dressed as a tramp and
drowning out Sari, first with the saxophone and then
with the ukulele. With this change, the act had been
rehearsed before him, booked at three hundred a week,
and the young De Jonghes were to all appearances on
the road to prosperity. They were to start on tour
almost immediately, and so the babies were to go to
their grandmother with Ward.
Among the applicants who had answered Ward's
advertisement for a nurse to go to California had been
Olive. The matrimonial picking was hard in Chicago,
and Olive had heard that conditions were much better
in California. When she looked in the old woman's
eager eyes, Ward did not have the heart to choose a
more competent applicant. Olive was, after all, trust-
worthy and devoted.
II
A puff of white smoke from the engine blotted out
the landscape, a white, solid, beautiful thing, until it
dissolved.
Most things are like that smoke screen, said Ward
to herself softly. One went through smoke screens
all the time. Just ahead there was always one that
seemed impassable. One had to be as sure of oneself
as the engine of the car was a sureness so certain that
it was unconscious, then one plodded steadily through
and saw that troubles, joys, everything, was only a
sort of smoke screen. Oneself, that was the reality,
the rest should be recognized as unimportant.
THE LOVE LEGEND 327
in
Looking through the train window she grimly re-
solved that no person should ever again affect her
destiny as Rod had done, as Oz had done. No one.
There was a kind of exultation in the thought. She
would love again, yes, but never with that agony of
self-abandonment, that painful submergence of her
personality in another. Never would she sob herself
to sleep, or wait tense with misery beside a telephone
that didn't ring. That sort of love was criminal
destructive debasing.
Her mother had loved that way first her husband
and then her children. She would probably fasten the
same tentacles of affectionate tyranny on her grand-
children. Poor little babies warm thoughts of them
coursed through her.
She would have children. The thought of spinster-
hood would not do. She must have them if only to
prove that it was not necessary to love them too much.
She smiled as she thought of Dizzy's theory that no
woman wanted children except to experiment on, to
move about like little puppets that were too weak to
revolt against her will. But she would not let them
rule her either. She would love them and still keep
peace with herself.
Out the window dusk was falling. The transparent
blue and velvety sky had a single gold star gleaming
through as if a golden story was hid from the world
except for that tiny rent, where it shone through the
blue stuff of the twilight.
Here Ward saw beauty. And felt herself somehow
in it. The thing meant to her in some strange way,
the happiness that was in her heart, and the odd
328 THE LOVE LEGEND
vibrant pain that was there at the bottom of it all.
That was it, that was beauty, that was the meaning
of pain. Beauty rides on pain, a gallant mistress.
And in the subduing and conquering of pain is beauty.
Her life was to be like a swim at twilight through a
sea like that gold-split blue sky. She could feel the
soft caressing water on her body, taste the fresh even-
ing air, as she thought of the blue curtains of sky and
water shading from the brightness beyond.
Life was like swimming. And with her three sis-
ters she had plunged in instead of waiting on the
beach as the other Lakeshore girls had done.
Sari had tumbled in, anxious to be there no matter
what might befall her. She had met storm and eddies,
undertows without fear, was still swimming on bravely,
calmly. Nita had waited for her opportunity and then
dived, a clear straight leap, and had been going evenly
and surely ever since. In babyhood, Dizzy had waded
in, walking until the water covered her chin and then
had learned to swim. She, Ward, had alone encoun-
tered dangerous whirlpools, and that was because she
had thought a sandbar lay just beneath where she
could be in the midst of everything, and still not strug-
gle. There was no sand bar, but there were smooth,
clear stretches where the expert swimmer using all his
faculties could proceed with the minimum of difficul-
ties, and enjoy as he went. If he saw a storm ahead,
by clear swimming and even breathing and not losing
his head he could come through it all right. And
there were moments of sunset and rainbows that lent
color to the swim. What was on the other shore did
not interest her. She had conquered the great force
THE LOVE LEGEND 329
that would have drawn her to the bottom and washed
her up senseless on the shore from which she had
come. She felt confident in her power to swim this
lake with no more trouble. . . .
VI
Thus she sat modifying, striving to harmonize her
new conclusions with one another, forming a syncre-
tism, and thinking that she had no more illusions.
Four of them were traveling happily, expectantly
toward the west fortune, fame and perfection lying
just ahead. But Ward was the only one of them
who sat philosophising, marking figures on the white
sheet of the future, and coloring them with crimson,
golden and sapphire dreams. Brilliant, clear and
steady, her life would be a great blue jewel, shooting
blue rays in the sunlight . . . and perhaps in time to
come some other man ... the love legend, like hope,
is deathless.
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