Part 6
"Here's a pathetic case of chronic melancholia," the doctor continued, as we walked among the inmates. "That white-haired woman has been here twenty-six years. She is entirely tractable with one obsession. Every Sunday she writes this letter:
"'Sunday.
"'Dear John:
"'I am sorry we quarreled when you were going away out West. It was all my fault. I hope you will forgive and write.
"'Your loving, "'Esther.'
"Every Monday she asks for a letter, and, though receiving none, becomes radiant with hope and says: 'It will come to-morrow.' The last of the week she is depressed. Sunday she again writes her letter. That has been her life for twenty-six years. Her youthful face is due to her mental inactivity. Aimlessly she does whatever is suggested. The years roll on and her emotions alternate between silent grief and fervid hope.
"This is the male ward. That tall man has been here twenty years. His history sheet says from alcoholism. He went to Alaska, struck gold, and returned home to marry the girl he left behind. He found her insane and began drinking, lost his fortune and then his reason, and became a ward of the State, always talking about his girl and events that happened long ago.
"He is the 'John' to whom 'Esther' writes her letter.
"They meet every day.
"They will never know each other."
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COLLUSION
By Lincoln Steffens
The sacred door of the Judge's chambers bolted open and he beheld the light, lovely figure of a woman trembling before him; brave, afraid.
"Oh, Judge," she panted, but she turned and closing the door securely, put her back against it to hold it shut. And so at bay, she called to him:
"Judge, Judge, can't I tell you the truth? Can't I? My lawyer says I mustn't. He says perjury is the only way. And I--I have done perjury, Judge. So has my husband. And I'll swear to it all in court when we are under oath. But here where we are all alone, you and I, unsworn, with no one to hear, can't I tell you the truth?
"I must. I can't stand the lies. Yes, yes, I know they are merely forms, legal forms. My lawyer has explained that, and that we must respect the law and comply with its requirements. And we'll do that, Judge; we have, and I'll go through with it, if--I mean that it would help me if I could know that you were not deceived by the lies; if I could know that you knew the truth.
"And the truth is so much truer and more beautiful than the lies. Ours is. I loved him, Judge. I love him now. And he loved me. And it wasn't his fault that he fell in love with her. And she didn't mean to--to hurt me so. She was my friend. I brought them together. I was happy when I brought them together, her, my old chum, and him, my lover; and when I saw that they took to each other, I was glad. I never thought of their loving. I didn't think of that till, by and by, I found that they were avoiding each other. I couldn't get them to meet any more. That made me think--it was terrible what I thought.
"I thought--Judge, I knew that they had agreed not to meet any more because they had discovered that they loved each other. He admitted it, when I asked him, finally. So did she, later, when upon my demand, we all three met to speak what was in our hearts.
"That was when I refused to have it so. I wouldn't keep a man who loved another woman. I couldn't, could I? And so I said I would go away and get the divorce and let them be together and, by and by--marry.
"It was all to be clean and honourable and fine, Judge. We didn't know then the requirements of the law. We didn't know we shouldn't have an honest understanding like that. And I--I didn't know that I had to make charges against him that are not true, and that he had to write me letters to prove he had refused to support me; false letters; and coarse. He? Coarse? Judge, he----
"But I'm not complaining. We copied, my husband and I, the letters the lawyer wrote out for us to sign and date back and show to you. We have done our part. I have lived here, in this terrible place, among these other--people. I have been here the required length of time for the 'residence.' I have withstood the looks we get from men--and women. We have obeyed the law, yes, and I will come to your court and swear--I will swear falsely, Judge, to all you ask. I must, mustn't I? I can't go on this way loving a man who doesn't love me. And I can't keep two lovers apart, can I? When love is so beautiful, so right, so good. Don't I know? And it must be pure.
"So I will do my duty, just as my lawyer does his, and as you do yours. Oh, I know; I know how conscientious you all are, and especially you, Judge. My lawyer has told me, again and again, that you know it's all perjury. Every time I wanted to come to you and tell you the truth, he has said that you understood. He forbade me to come; he doesn't know I am here now. But I had to come. I think I might not be able to go through with it if I had not told you the truth myself: How we three have agreed perfectly, he and I and she; how we are to pay each a third of the costs. They were so generous about it, begging to pay all. And I want you to be sure we are all perfectly reconciled to the change; all of us; I, too; perfectly.
"And, Judge, he, my husband, he couldn't, he simply could not have written letters like that. Oh, I'll swear to them; I'll swear to anything, I'll do anything, almost, if--if only you, Judge----"
The Judge rose.
"If," he finished for her, "if only I will understand. Well, I will."
And he went to the door, opened it wide and, as she passed, he bowed to the woman with the respect which, till that day, he had paid only to the Law.
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FAITHFUL TO THE END
By Clair W. Perry
Embarkation of the 10th London Reservists for France was the occasion of a demonstration in the city such as had not been seen since the Canadian contingent crossed the Channel. The call for these fresh troops had a sinister significance. It meant the long-awaited "general advance" from Calais to Belfort was impending. At the quay, where the dingy transports were swallowing up file after file of England's youth, were hundreds of women and girls come to bid a bitter-sweet farewell to their lads, whose vigorous bodies were to be crammed into the hungry maw of war.
Lieutenant Topham, Wing Commander of the aerial division with the 10th, stood apart at the far end of the quay. He had just finished superintending the loading of his machines. He was watching the troops file aboard, hungrily absorbed in the dramatic scenes that passed, one after the other like cinema scenes, when wife, mother, sweetheart, sister, kissed loved ones good-bye. He moved nearer the sloping gangway where were enacted these hasty tender farewells, swift embraces at the foot of the passage, so swift the progress of the tramping files was scarcely halted, each woman, for an instant, giving up her soul in an embrace--and the next instant giving up her son, brother, or mate to his Maker--or his destroyer.
Topham was deeply moved by the scenes. But it was a selfish emotion. There was no one to bid him farewell. For the first time in his careless life he felt the lack. He had no mother, no sister, no sweetheart. His men friends, even, were not there; they had gone on before.
As he moved nearer the ship on which he was to take passage for France, and the wild dash in air for which he had been detailed, to shell the recently established German Zeppelin base near "Hill 60," there came over him a premonition of death and a yearning emotion. He wanted some human being to bid him farewell, some one who placed his life above all else, a woman who cared.
In his abstracted progress he almost ran into the figure of a girl. She was standing close to the moving file, and in her searching eyes, as Topham looked in silent apology, he saw a fire that thrilled him. He noted, too, beauty, and a band of mourning on her sleeve. Her gaze pierced Topham with compelling appeal. The bugle was giving its piercing call, "All hands on." With a sudden impulse Topham stepped close to the girl.
"Are you sending--some one away?" he queried.
She shook her head and touched the band on her arm.
"My father--a month ago--at Ypres," she replied.
"I am going--over there," eagerly explained Topham, "and I have no one. I feel that I--shall never return. I wonder if you---- Will you kiss me good-bye? I promise you I shall never kiss another woman--that I will be faithful--until the end," he finished with wistful whimsicality.
Her smile was like a soft flame. Without a word she stepped close to him and, as he doffed his cap and bent, she clasped him about the neck, drew his close-cropped head down, and kissed him on the lips.
There was no time for words. Topham had to spring for the moving gang-plank. The bugle had sounded its last call for stragglers such as he. The girl who had given him his sweet farewell was swallowed up in the crowd.
Halfway across the Channel Topham found he could not even recall the girl's features, the colour of her eyes or hair. All that remained to him was a dim expression of sweet, yearning womanliness, an abstract conception.
At the transfer hospital, a week later, Topham's shattered, helpless form was laid for a few moments on a cot. His fall from a great height after a desperate duel with a German Taube left him victor and hero but with the shadow of death hovering over him. Numbness mercifully stilled the pain that had gripped him and he lay passive. It was not until he felt the touch of a hand softer than that of the hurrying surgeon who had given hasty "first aid" examination that he opened his eyes. A woman nurse, the only one he had seen so near the lines, was bending over him. He could see only dimly. A mist was over his eyes from the explosion of his engine. Her touch, however, seemed to give him a thrill of vitality. When she moved on he sank into semi-coma, with the feeling of chill. Death bearing down on him. She moved again to his side and he moaned. The grim grip was tightening. Like a boy he was afraid. In the world there was only himself, this woman, and approaching death.
"I am going," he muttered swiftly, as the nurse bent near. "Will you kiss me good-bye? I can promise you--I will be faithful--until the end." His smile was a pitiful effort at humour. He felt her warm lips on his--and then oblivion.
Topham came to himself--save for the memory of a delirium of travel in motor-ambulance and boat--in a clean white bed in a large, lofty room. When his senses cleared he knew he was in England. White-clad nurses moved about the room in which were many other beds containing huddled or stretched-out figures. At his first movement one of the nurses came to his bedside. Her keen glance, under her significant cap, spoke efficiency and warm human sympathy. A few deft touches, a spoon of medicine, a pat of the pillow, and she was gone.
Topham awoke again in the dark small hours when man's vitality is at its lowest ebb; awoke with that familiar depression, as of a chill hand gripping his heart--squeezing his very soul. It was Death, again, groping for him. Only his brain seemed clear. He tinkled, with a supreme effort, the bell at his bedside. A nurse came, her face indistinct in the dim light, and bent over him in an attitude of solicitation.
"What is it?" she asked, and her voice seemed that of an angel from Heaven.
"I--I am almost gone," gasped Topham. "My heart is stopping. I--I am not afraid--but--it is so lonely. I have no one. Could you--kiss me--good-bye?"
He was halted by a swift movement. She had raised his head and he swallowed a draft of something that sent a liquid thrill through him. In a trice his feeling changed from that of a sinking, suffocating soul to that of a man whose life is rushing back into him. The nurse was smiling into his eyes.
"You were going to say," she murmured musically, "that you will be faithful to the end."
Topham opened his eyes wider. That face--the ripe lips--the clear, burning eyes! They were those of the girl at the quay--of the nurse at the transfer hospital--no, of the nurse who had bent over him when he first regained consciousness here--yes, of all three. A deep flush overspread his pallid face.
"You said you would be faithful to the end," she repeated roguishly. He groped for an answer.
"In my mind," he confessed, "I did not know you. But in my heart I must have known you all the time."
Then she kissed him again.
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ARLETTA
By Margaret Ade
It was on a Monday morning in August that Miss Backbay climbed the brownstone steps to the rooming-house conducted by Mrs. Edward Southend in Massachusetts Avenue, Boston. Miss Backbay was short, stout, and sixty, and her face was flushed and scowling.
"I wish to speak with Mrs. Southend," she snapped at the woman who opened the door. The woman, a middle-aged, quiet-looking little woman, glanced at the card and said: "I am Mrs. Southend, Miss Backbay; come this way please."
In the parlour Miss Backbay and Mrs. Southend looked into each other's eyes for a few moments and exchanged a silent challenge; then Miss Backbay leaned forward in her chair and said: "I have come, Mrs. Southend, to talk with you concerning this--this affair between your son and my niece. Miss Arletta Backbay. I have, as you know, brought her up, and I love her as if she were my own daughter. She is the last of the Backbays--the Backbays of Backbay. Our family lived on Beacon Hill when Boston Common was a farming district. The Backbays are direct--_direct_ descendants of William I, King of England--William the Conqueror."
Miss Backbay drew a long, deep breath.
Mrs. Southend was silent.
"I have devoted years of my life," Miss Backbay continued, "to the education of my niece. Nothing has been spared to prepare her for the high social position to which, by her ancestry alone, she is entitled. I am going into this bit of family history so you will understand--so you will see this affair from my viewpoint. I have been exceedingly careful in the selection of her teachers, her associates, and her servants. Your son came to us well recommended by his pastor and by his former employer. I have no fault to find with him as--as a chauffeur, but as a suitor for the hand of my niece he--he is impossible. Absolutely! The thing is absurd. I--I have done what I could to break up this affair. I have discharged him. But my niece has defied me. She assures me that she loves him and--and will marry him in spite of everything. She is headstrong, self-willed, and--and completely bewitched. She has lost all pride--pride in her ancient lineage. Now I have come to you to beseech you to use your influence with your son. Induce him to leave the city--he must leave the city, if only for a year. I--I shall pay----"
"Pardon me, just a moment, Miss Backbay." Mrs. Southend left the room, and in a few minutes she returned carrying a large volume, her fingers between the pages.
"As I listened to you, Miss Backbay, the thought came to me very forcibly that it is a pity--a great pity--that you could not have selected your ancestors as you do your servants--from the better class of respectable working people. But, of course, you could not. You could, however, try to live them down--forget them--some of them, anyway. Listen to this biographical sketch of your most famous ancestor. It is from page 659 of the 'Encyclopædia Britannica': 'William I, King of England--William the Conqueror, born 1027 or 1028. He was the bastard son of Robert the Devil, Duke of Normandy, by Arletta, the daughter of a tanner.'"
Mrs. Southend closed the book with a bang.
"Not much to boast about, is it? We all have ancestors, Miss Backbay, but the less said about some of them the better. And now, if my son wants to go out of _his_ class and mix it up with Robert the Devil and Arletta--why, that's his--his funeral. You'll excuse me now, Miss Backbay. I have my husband's dinner to prepare."
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WHICH?
By Joseph Hall
They were two women, one young, radiant, the other gently, beautifully old.
"But, Auntie, it's such fun."
The older rose.
"Wait."
In a moment she had returned. Two faded yellow letters lay upon the young girl's lap.
"Read them."
Wonderingly the girl obeyed. The first read:
"Dearest:
"I leave you to John. It is plain you care for him. I love you. Just now it seems that life without you is impossible. But I can no longer doubt. If you cared, there would be no doubt. John is my friend. I would rather see you his than any others, since you cannot be mine. God bless you.
"Will."
The other:
"Beloved:
"I am leaving you to the better man. For me there can never be another love. But it is best--it is the right thing--and I am, yes, I am glad that it is Will you love instead of me. You cannot be anything but happy with him. With me--but that is a dream I must learn to forget.
"As ever and ever, "John."
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WHAT THE VANDALS LEAVE
By Herbert Riley Howe
The war was over, and he was back in his native city that had been retaken from the Vandals. He was walking rapidly through a dimly lit quarter. A woman touched his arm and accosted him in fuddled accents.
"Where are you going, M'sieu? With me, hein?"
He laughed.
"No, not with you, old girl. I'm going to find my sweetheart."
He looked down at her. They were near a street lamp. She screamed. He seized her by the shoulders and dragged her closer to the light. His fingers dug her flesh, and his eyes gleamed.
"Joan!" he gasped.
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BEN T. ALLEN, ATTY., VS. HIMSELF
By William H. Hamby
"Lawyers always get theirs." The hardware dealer on the north side spoke with some bitterness and entire literalness. The check for one hundred and seventy-five dollars just wrenched from its stub bore "Ben T. Allen, Atty.," in the middle, and "Peter Shaw Hardware Co.," at the bottom.
Peter, by the aid and advice of counsel, had been resisting the payment of a merchant's tax of five dollars a year which the alleged city of Clayton Center had insisted on collecting. The case had now been in the supreme court two years. This check was merely "on account."
The check had occasioned the remark, but the bitterness back of it was engendered by another case, in which Peter had been prosecuting his claims for the affection of Betty Lane, court stenographer. Attorney Allen appeared against him this time instead of for him, and in both cases Peter seemed to be getting the worst of it.
But that, of course, is all in the viewpoint. At that moment Attorney Allen stood by the front window of his offices, his thick hair tangled like the fleece of a black sheep after a restless night, his soul splashing in a vat of gloom. Betty Lane had just passed through the courthouse yard on her way to work. Nature had made Betty very attractive, but her job had made her independent.
The lawyer was bitterly despondent. Law practice in Clayton Center was no longer lucrative. Although Allen was very dextrous in twisting three-ply bandages around the eyes of the Lady with the Scales, the Lady with the Pencil at the right of the Judge was not so blind. The citizens of Clayton Center had developed a spineless, milksop tendency to settle even their constitutional rights out of court. Besides Betty's seven dollars a day Allen's income looked as ill-fed as a dromedary in an elephant parade.
The young lawyer's heart was so heavy over his light matrimonial prospects that he went out that night with some of the boys and got drunk. In returning at one A. M., singing "It Was at Aunt Dinah's Quilting Party--I was seeing Nellie home," he fell off the board sidewalk and broke the established precedent that a drunken man cannot hurt himself by a fall.
The breaking of one leg was the most fortunate accident upon which a distressed barrister ever fell. It gave him two legs on which to stand in court.
He sued the city immediately for ten thousand dollars' damages on account of the defective sidewalk. His three companions swore positively that there was not only one hole in the walk, but two, and not only two loose boards, but six.
Moreover, it was not a plain fracture of the limb. Allen proved by a liver specialist that the jolt had permanently deranged his liver; a spine specialist testified the jar had injured the fourteenth vertebra; a nerve specialist swore that the shock of the fall and subsequent anguish of mind in seeing his law practice drop away would probably result in a total breakdown.
The jury gave him four thousand dollars' damages--twice what he hoped. And the city attorney, having a fraternal feeling for fractured legal legs, advised the city to pay instead of appeal.
One bright morning, fully recovered and adorned in a natty spring suit, Ben T. Allen went to the courthouse to get an order from the court to the city treasurer for his four thousand dollars' damages.
There was a click of a typewriter in an anteroom. Betty Lane, the court stenographer, was down early working out some notes.
Ben T. Allen went in, laid his hat debonairly on a stack of notebooks, sat on the edge of her desk, and locked his hands around his knees and smiled possessively.
"Why, good morning, Mr. Allen." Betty looked up and nodded. "Allow me to congratulate you."
"For what?"
"Why, haven't you seen the supreme court's decision in this morning's paper? You won your case. Peter Shaw does not have to pay his annual five-dollar merchant tax."
"Good!" exclaimed Allen. "No, I had not seen it."
"Yes," nodded Betty, with something not quite transparent in her smile, "the judge who handed down the decision sustained your contention, that as the notices of election, at which the town was incorporated thirty-eight years ago, were posted only nineteen days instead of twenty, as the law requires, the articles of incorporation were illegally adopted. Therefore, the town is non-existent. Its officers have no right to levy or collect taxes, to sue or to be sued, to receive or _pay out moneys_."
"Good heavens!" Allen felt himself slowly collapsing on the table, sick in every organ described by the specialists.