SX /I 'OOC ,: 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