Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

reaching for something above the stoveup on one toe again, which had so amused Heinrich. It is the red stick.

She left the door open, and now the moonlight comes in there too. It makes a narrow path across the floor and the bed, where the gray blanket is rising and falling regularly-his stomach, it should be. Bertha tiptoes forward in her wet stocking feet, Hannah following. The daughter kicks something: it is one of the yellow shoes, and it shines out in the light. Bertha is feeling for his face, and finds it-in mid-air. He is sitting up, staring at them. Probably heard it all. Well, then

Bertha is thrown on her knees with the impetus. A groan. She is raising herself up slowly to do it again- She feels on the bed

"What's this?" comes a voice from the floor. "Don't, don't-Hannah! There is more you're killing me for only a dollar!"

It was a half hour before dawn, or so. No one at all on the road from the station. In the dark lump of a house, they lighted that strange lantern. They looked through the papers. Hannah could read a trifle. They came to the letter of credit. What's that? "It's a hotel bill," said Hannah. And this, with a photograph on it? "Heinrich Gab-rows-ky," she read aloud. Mother and daughter looked at each other. They bent over the photograph. Something far back seemed to crack in their minds. And there was the name. Hannah gave a silly laugh-a sort of whine.

The Proudest Fruit

BY ELIZABETH MORROW

APPLES are the proudest fruit
Ever bent a tree,

Dreaming still of Paradise,

Heirs of mutiny:

Scarlet-coated harlequins

Who with impish fling

Lighted all the fires of Troy,

Taught how planets swing.

Ancient gods have not withstood

Their bright witchery;

With an apple Pluto won

Sad Persephone.

Golden apples, dragon-kept,

The Hesperides

Gave an island diadem

To great Hercules.

Painted flame and ashen heart

Dead Sea orchards bore,

Ghostly harvest of desire

Snaky stem to core.

Apples are the proudest fruit

One life on a tree,

Then in children's cheeks they wear
Immortality.

W

BY MCCREADY HUSTON

Author of "His," "Jonah's Whale," "Not Poppy-," etc.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY H. VAN BUREN KLINE

ATCHING the swirl following its mad leader into a maze of laughing, singing, swaying, dancing couples capped in carnival fancies of gay paper, Naomi Widdowson, standing in the doorway of the Big Savage Country Club ballroom, wondered how soon she and Hamar might slip away and go home.

Out of the figure momentarily, she stood alone, laden with cotillon favorsan idiotic pink ruff, a shepherdess hat of blue, a long crook, a toy balloon, magnificent crêpe roses, and grotesque chrysanthemums. Her hair was on the point of falling over her flushed face-she was one of the two or three members who held out against the fashion of shingling-and her coral gown was torn. But the slight, bald prodigy of endurance, the cotillonmaster, knew nothing of fatigue. He was determined, Naomi suspected, to make up in excess of exertion for a certain mechanical technique of frivolity.

From the side doors that opened on the wide porches of the clubhouse came two stodgy little girls carrying incredibly wide baskets from which overflowed new stocks of favors. In the centre of the room the dancers were tossing colored paper streamers over wires which crossed above their heads; they were shouting and jostling. They were hugely pleased by the impromptu revival by the negro musicians of "Rufus Rastus Johnson Brown."

At intervals Naomi saw her husband in the throng. He was having a good time; probably he would not want to go home. The music kept beating, beating, beating. The figure was without an end, apparently. With gathering dejection Naomi remembered they were driving the Starkweathers home. That, of course, settled leaving before the final beat of the drums.

The Starkweathers were the kind of people who stay until the end of everything. Suddenly Naomi was angry. Why should she stand there covered with a professional caterer's trash? These people, excepting Hamar, were infinitely silly. Most of them were older than she; many of them had children. Regina Aldis had five; but there she was, capering in a riotous cake-walk. And there went Hamar, posturing with that Terriss girl, Georgia. Georgia Terriss, Naomi had heard around card-tables at Big Savage, made a specialty of married men.

She turned and walked slowly to a row of chairs, stripped off her favors, and tossed them in a forlorn heap. Then, without a glance behind, she walked out to the porch.

This was better. Cushioned wicker beside a white pillar, with a moonlit view across the rolling sweep of the fairways, suited her mood. Sitting there she admitted to herself that this mood had been coming on since she had bundled little Michael into the coupé and hurried him back to the orphans' home, from which he had been borrowed.

She had done right. She had satisfied herself of that; and Hamar, looking up from his coffee, had nodded.

"I don't think we ought to keep him unless you feel the need for him; and unless we could do him full justice," he had said. Hamar was like that; he had never, in all of their eleven years together, made things difficult.

The obstacle was, Naomi told herself, the sum of the never-ending, insistent exactions of children and the pressures of the set in which she and Hamar moved. At thirty-two she was being driven to the last, ultimate ounce of energy. Her experiment of two weeks with the borrowed boy, who was five years old, had prompted caution. He had required so much. Naomi saw that if she kept him she would

[graphic]

Suddenly Naomi was angry. Why should she stand there covered with a professional caterer's Page 516.

trash?

have to choose between things which had become very important to her and the care of the child.

Speculation about how Mrs. Aldis kept

her head above the surface of the social whirlpool and looked after her brood was not comforting. All of the Big Savage crowd wondered how she did it. If Re

gina Aldis could take care of five-Naomi weathers. Fond as Hamar was of dancgot to her feet, feeling the need of motion ing and a frolic, he would not want to go; for reassuring herself in her carefully but to-morrow's engagements arranged built-up position. It was all right. themselves in Naomi's mind like a chalMichael was in excellent hands. Naomi lenge. They must go. and others like her could do most by watching over and contributing to the orphans' home.

At a sound behind her Naomi turned and found Mrs. Aldis. Regina wore her cotillon hat, awarded to her in a romp, a Spanish affair of black and red paper; but she carried none of the other trumpery. She stood there dusting her hands together and smiling at Naomi.

"You've caught me," she said. "I've just been hiding our favors so we can pick them up in a moment when we start home. Jim has rustled three more of everything, so we'll have five. Perfect!" Naomi frowned.

"Do you mean to tell me that you and Jim are taking those gimcracks home?" "Why, of course." The other spoke softly. "We're not the only ones. Look around on this porch and in the dressingrooms and you'll find piles, all ready." "Silly. It's bad enough to wear the

stuff here. I could do without cotillons." "I guess you don't understand. The children at home expect them."

Mrs. Aldis came a step closer and laid a hand on Naomi's arm.

"I thought you might be doing the same thing to-night. I heard you and Hamar had taken a youngster from the home."

Naomi looked away quickly. "You are too complimentary, Regina. I took him back to-day."

There followed too much silence. Regina ended the strain.

"Well, it's not for me to say; probably you are right."

The band had begun again inside. Mrs. Aldis turned and ran back to the ballroom door, light as a girl. Naomi found her chair again and sat gazing out across the golf course. Behind her the screened doors snapped and in a moment a man and a woman passed her, carrying a bulging package to a parked automobile. Other couples passed. It was growing late; the party was breaking up. She would find Hamar and drag him away. She could manage the Stark

As she turned toward the lights of the ballroom entrance she was aware of a flurry around the coatrooms and a movement of many people. Good-nights were being shouted, and above them the throb of the music reached her, reminding her of those couples who would stay until the close.

She drew aside to permit a group to hurry past her. It was then that she caught a glimpse of Jessie Starkweather, standing waiting, like a schoolgirl, in the sweater-jacket she had drawn on. She held a great pompon of yellow paper.

"John will be here in a minute," she said to Naomi. "He found we were short a paper hat for one of the children, so he's trying to buy one from the caterer."

Jessie looked twenty. Naomi knew she was thirty-three. Her eyes were starry. When it came to clutching the youthfulness that seemed to be the passion of the hour, some of these mothers revealed a stronger grip than women like herself, Naomi admitted. Recognizing a great desire, inspired by the sight of Jessie with her pompon, she made a swift calculation. There was Hamar beyond, shrugging into his coat. She recalled the picture of Michael sitting on his knees last night. She did not want to recall it, but it came back to her unbidden. She saw the little boy riding with the little circus. whip she had bought him.

Hamar and she had no favors; they had tossed them away. They seemed, suddenly, to be the only ones without them. Naomi felt an appalling loneliness, looking about her at the laughing women.

It was only five miles to the orphans' home. Hamar, who had a way with such people, might be able to get the matron up. Perhaps for money they could get Michael out to-night; take him home with them. She put a hand to her head, giddily sketching the possibility, pushing forward into the crowded room.

Silly Howard Graham delayed her with some obscure joke. Across the shoulders of the men she spied Hamar's face and raised a hand to him. He did

[graphic][ocr errors][merged small]

In the deep shadow stood Hamar and with him the Terriss girl, who made a specialty of married

men.-Page 520.

« AnteriorContinuar »