Chapter V: Introduction: The Judges (5)

“That’s a lie!” snapped Hoyt. “You’re talking poobah! I know how those things happen. If P-B hadn’t gone down after the two-seater they’d all be here now; and by the same reasoning, if my aunt wore trousers she’d be my uncle. The important thing is that it’s you and me now and nothing else matters. We’ll have four brand-new men to whip into shape to-morrow, and whatever you think of yourself, you’ve got to do it. I can’t do much, for I’ll be ahead, leading. You’ll be behind them and you’ll have to do it all. They’ll be frightened and nervous and green, but the job’s to be done. Understand? You’ve got to goad them on and get them out of trouble and watch them every minute, so that in time they’ll be as good as P-B and Trent--so that when their turn comes they can do for other green men what P-B and Trent did for you. Do you see now what this morning has done for you?” He paused for a moment, and then, in a lower tone--“Afraid? Who isn’t afraid? But it doesn’t do any good to brood over it.”

C Flight did no duty the next day, nor the day following. Hoyt went up to the 212th and identified Mallory for burial, while Paterson flew back to the Pool for the replacement pilots and a new Camel for Hoyt.

In Amiens he heard the first whispered rumours of what was going to happen. Intelligence was ranting for information. Everybody had the story and nobody was right. The hospitals were evacuating as fast as possible. Fresh battalions were being hustled up. It wasn’t a push. Anyone could tell that with half an eye. Something the Hun was doing. The spring offensive a month earlier this year. G. H. Q. was plugging the gaps frantically, replacing and reinforcing and wondering where the hammer would fall and what it would carry with it. Hence the pictures that had cost the lives of P-B and Trent. The air itself trembled with uncertainty, and rumours flew fast and thick.

Paterson flew back with the four new pilots and brought the rumours with him. Hoyt had more to barter in exchange. The talk ran riot at dinner.

“It’s a Hun push, all right, but where, nobody knows. We’ll have word in a day or so, but it’ll be wrong whatever it is, mark what I say!”

And then on the evening of the twentieth things started. A signal came for the major just as they sat down to mess. He went out and presently called out the three flight commanders. When they came back, they took their places thoughtfully. Silence trembled in the room like the hush that precedes the first blasting stroke of a great bell in a cathedral tower. The major swept his eyes down the board.

“You will remain at the airdrome to-night, gentlemen, and remain sober. Officers’ luggage is to be packed and placed on lorries which Mr. Harbord is providing for that purpose.” He paused for a moment. “This is a precautionary move, gentlemen. We are to be ready to retire at a moment’s notice. Flight commanders have the map squares of the new airdrome. You can take that up later among yourselves.” He leaned back in his chair and beckoned to the mess sergeant. “Take every officer’s order, sergeant, and bring me the chit.”

The talk broke in a wild flood that roared and crackled down the length of the table. The tin walls trembled with the surge of it and the echoes broke in hot discord among the rough pine rafters. Offensive patrols for all three flights, to start at five minutes to four A. M. Air domination must be maintained. Wing’s instructions were to stop everything at all costs. Go out and fight and shut up. Somebody presented the adjutant with the sugar bowl and asked him if he had his umbrella for the trip back. The adjutant had spent eighteen days without soles to his boots in 1914. He and the medical officer stood drinks for the squadron.

About ten o’clock, Hoyt called the five men of C Flight into his hut. “To-morrow, something is going to happen, I’m afraid, and you’ve got to meet it without much experience. What I want you to understand is simply this: You’ve got Pat and you’ve got me. Follow us and do what we do. We won’t let you down so far as it is humanly possible. If the flight gets split up in a dog fight, then fight your way out two and two--and go back to the new ’drome two and two. Don’t go separately. Further”--he paused--“if anything happens to me”--Paterson looked up at him quickly and something tugged sharply at his heart; Hoyt went on quietly--“take your lead from Mr. Paterson. You’ll be Number 5, Darlington. You’ll climb up as deputy leader. And if anything happens to Pat, then it’s up to you to bring the rest home.” He smiled. “There is a bottle of Dewar’s in this drawer. Take a snifter now, if you want it, and one in the morning. It’s for C Flight only. Oh, yes, one more thing: The fact that we’re moving back to a new airdrome seems to indicate that staff thinks nothing can stop the Hun from breaking through. The fact that nothing can stop the Hun seems to indicate that, for the nonce, we are losing our part of the war. If the thought will help you--it’s yours without cost.”

* * * * *

The caller rapped sharply and threw back the door. Paterson leaped to his feet half asleep and pushed back the window curtains. The clouds were down to about four hundred feet, lowering in a gray mass over the mist on the airdrome. He went into the next cubicle and turned Hoyt out. Hoyt sat up on the cot edge and ran his hand across his forehead.

“Stop the caller,” he said. “Let’s see what’s what before we turn everybody out.” They shrugged into their flying coats and groped down the passage to the major’s cubicle in the next hut block.

“Let ’em sleep,” said the major. “Can’t do anything in this muck. Turn out one officer in each flight to watch for the break and to warn the rest. Send Harbord to me if you see him wandering about.”

They woke up the skippers of A and B Flights and told them the news. Paterson took the watch for C. He turned up his coat collar and went out. It was cold and miserable in the open, and the chill crept into his bones. The smoke from his cigarette hung low about him in the still air.

Presently to the eastward there came a low roar. He looked at his wrist watch. The hands pointed to six minutes before four o’clock. The ground trembled slightly to the sound of the distant guns and the air stirred in faint gusts that pulled at blue wraiths of his cigarette smoke. The push had started. His muscles stiffened at the knees as he listened. The first shock of the guns was raw and sharp in the quiet air; then it settled into a lower, full-throated rumble like the heavy notes of an organ growling in an underground basilica. Now it rose again in its greater volume--rose steadily, slowly, as if it were a colossal express train hammering down the switch points at unthinkable speed. Presently it soared to its highest pitch and held the blasting monotony of its tone. The minutes ticked off, but the guns never faltered in their symphony of blood. At 4:35 one pipe of the organ to the southeastward cut out suddenly and almost immediately began again, closer than before. Again it broke, as he listened, and crept nearer still.

He walked down the line of huts, thrashing his arms and blowing on his cold hands. An impersonal thing to him, yet he shivered slightly and stared upward at the low clouds. Men out there to the eastward were in it. The suspense was over for them. And suddenly he found himself annoyed at the delay, annoyed at the fog and clouds above, that kept him on the ground. He wanted to see what was going on--to know. He turned impatiently and went into the mess. The sergeant brought him coffee, and presently Muirhead of A Flight came in with Church of B.

“It’s on,” Church said absently. “I suppose this fog means hell up the line.”

They drank their coffee and smoked in silence. The sound of the guns crept nearer and nearer, and one by one the rest of the squadron drifted in for breakfast.

Hoyt sat down next to Paterson. “I don’t like it,” he said. “Something is giving way up there.” He went to the window and looked out. “Clouds are higher,” he said, “and the fog’s lifted a bit. What do you think, major?”

They crowded out of the mess doorway and stood in an anxious knot, staring upward. It was well after six o’clock.

“All right”--the major turned around--“get ready to stand by.”

C Flight collected in a little knot in front of Hoyt’s Camel, smoking and talking nervously. Paterson kept his eyes on Hoyt and stamped his feet to get the circulation up. A strange elation crept into his veins and warmed him. In a moment now--in a moment. Awkward waiting here. Awkward standing around listening to Darlington curse softly and pound his hands together.

Somewhere behind him on the road, a motor bike roared through the mist, and then to the southward a shell crashed not a thousand yards from the ’drome, and the echo of it thumped off across the fields. Darlington jumped and stared at the mushroom of greasy black smoke. A moment more--a moment now. Paterson reached over and tapped Darlington’s sleeve. “Keep your guns warm, old boy.” Darlington nodded fiercely.

The major climbed into his cockpit and a mechanic leaped to the propeller. The engine coughed once and the propeller snapped back. The mechanic leaped at it again. It spun down and melted into a circle of pale light. Everyone was climbing in. Hoyt flicked his cigarette away sharply and put a leg up into his stirrup.

They were taxi-ing out into the open ground, with the mechanics running after them. Presently they could see the road. Paterson stared at it in amazement. It was brown and crawling with lorries and troops. Something had happened! A Flight, with the major, sang off across the ground and took the air together in a climbing turn. B Flight waited a brief second and followed. Out of the corner of his eye, Paterson could see the mess sergeant climbing up on the lorry seat beside Harbord, the equipment officer. Then Hoyt waved his hand. Mechanics yanked at the chock ropes and waved them off. They blipped their motors and raced out after Hoyt.

At five hundred feet they took the roof in the lacy fringe of the low clouds. Bad, very bad, Paterson thought. He ran his thumb across the glass face of his altimeter and his globe became wet with the beaded moisture. He could hardly see Darlington’s tail. Ahead of them the clouds were a trifle higher. Hoyt led them up and turned northward. Murder to cross the line at that height, with the barrage on. Darlington was lagging a bit. Afraid of the clouds. He dived on Darlington’s tail and closed him up on Number 3. Darlington glanced back at him and ducked his head.

Hoyt was circling back now in a broad sweep. Over there somewhere was Cambrai. He looked up for an instant just in time to see the underside of a huge plane sweep over him. He ducked at the sight of the black crosses, but the plane was gone before he could whip his Lewis gun into action. Almost immediately one corner of his windshield ripped away and the triplex glass blurred with a quick frosting of a thousand cracks. He cursed into the roar of his motor and kept on.

They were higher now, but the visibility was frightful--like flying in a glass ball that had been streaked with thick dripping soapsuds. Here a glimpse and a rift that closed up as soon as you looked; there a blank wall, tapering into tantalizing shreds that you couldn’t quite see beyond. He fidgeted in his cockpit and turned his head from Hoyt, below him, to the gray emptiness behind. Nothing.

Presently Hoyt banked around, and following him, the compass needle on Paterson’s instrument board turned through a half circle. They were going back toward the south again and climbing still higher. An even thousand feet now--just under the rising, ragged clouds. He felt a drop of rain strike his cheek where his chin piece ended. It bit his skin like a thorn and stung for seconds afterward. His goggles were fogging. He ran a finger up under them and swept the lenses.

Then, in a breath, it happened. A gray flash swept down out of the clouds in front of the formation. Hoyt zoomed to avoid it. The Hun zoomed and they came together and melted into each other in a welter of torn, rumpled wings and flying splinters. Something black and kicking rose out and disappeared. The cords stood out in Paterson’s neck and his throat closed. Somewhere his stomach leaped and kicked inside of him, trying to get out, and he saw coffee dripping from the dials of his instruments.

In a second he had thrown his stick forward and gone down into Hoyt’s place. He didn’t dare look--he couldn’t look. He was screaming curses at the top of his voice and the screams caught in his throat in great sobs. His goggles were hopelessly fogged. He ripped them off. Behind him the four new men closed in tightly, with Darlington above them as deputy leader.

There was blood again on his lips. He pulled back his stick and climbed. There, somewhere in the clouds, were the men who had done it! All right! All right! His eyes stung and wept with the force of the wind, and his cheeks quivered under the lash of the raindrops. With his free hand, fist clenched, he pounded his knee in stunned anguish until his muscles ached. Hoyt! Hoyt! Then he saw what he wanted and dived down furiously at the shape in the mist. Bullets tore at his top plane and raked across the cowling behind him. He closed on the Hun and sent it spinning. There was another--three--five--nothing but Huns. He dived in between them. Fine! He was screaming again, and firing. He forgot he was flying. The joy stick thrashed crazily between his knees and the ground and the clouds were a muddy gray scarf that swept from side to side across his eyes. Guns were the thing. Once, in a quick flash, he saw tiny men running upside down through the ring sight of his Lewis gun--the gun on his top plane--funny.

His wrists ached and his fingers were quite dead against the Bowden trigger. No, not that; that’s a Camel--Darlington. He grabbed at his joy stick and pulled it back. Funny how hard it was to pull it. Another Camel swept in beside him, and another, with startling suddenness. It had been a long time now--a long time. Somebody had been afraid once and there had been a man named Hoyt. No, Hoyt was dead. Hoyt had been killed days before. Must have been P-B. P-B was probably in Amiens by now. He’d left in the tender at six o’clock. And always his guns chattered above the roar of his engine.

Abruptly, the cross wires of his centre section raced up to him from a great distance and stopped just before his eyes. He wondered where they had been all this time. He stared past them into the light disk of his propeller, and again the rain lashed into his face and stung him. He caught at the kicking joy stick and held on to it with both hands--but one hand fell away from it and wouldn’t come back. With an effort, he pulled back his stick to climb up under the clouds again. Must be up under the clouds. Must wait and get more Huns. Funny things, Huns. Clumsy, stupid gray things you shot at and sent down. Go home soon, rest a bit and get some more. He laughed softly to himself. Joke. Funniest thing in the world.

The centre section wires clouded up before his eyes and started to race away from him. Here! That’s bad! Can’t fly without centre section wires. He chuckled a bit over that. Absurd to think of flying without centre section wires! Come back here! You come back!

Just as his eyes closed, he saw a streak of roadway flicker through the struts of his left wing. There were faces on it quite close to him; faces that were white and staring; faces with arms raised above them. Funny. He whipped back his joy stick with a convulsive jerk, and then his head crashed forward and he threw up his arm to keep his teeth from being bashed out against the compass.

* * * * *

It was very dark--dark except for a dancing blue light far away. He moved slightly. Something cool touched his forehead.

“All right,” he muttered; “that’s all right now. You just follow me.” Someone whispered. He opened his eyes and stared into the darkness. “No,” he said quite plainly. “I mean it! Hoyt’s dead. I saw him go down.”

He felt something sharp prick his arm. “You’ve got the new airdrome pinpointed, haven’t you?” he asked.

A soft voice said, “Yes. Sh-h-h!”

“No,” he said, “I can’t. Darlington’s alone now, and I’ve got to go back. They’re green, but they’re good boys.” He moved his legs to get up. “There’s a bottle of Dewar’s----”

“No,” said the voice beside him.

“Oh, yes,” he said quietly. “Really, this is imperative. I know I crashed.”

A stealthy languor crept across his chest and flowed down toward his legs. He thought about it for a moment. “I ought to go,” he said pettishly. “But I’m so tired.”

“Yes,” said the voice. “Go to sleep now.”

“Right-o,” he said. “You call a tender and wake--me--half--an--hour.” He was quiet for a moment more and then he chuckled softly. “Tell ’em it’s poobah,” he said sharply.

“All right,” said the voice. “It’s poobah.”

His breathing became quiet and regular and footsteps tiptoed softly down the ward away from his bed.

NIGHT CLUB

BY KATHARINE BRUSH

From _Harper’s_

Promptly at quarter of ten P. M. Mrs. Brady descended the steps of the Elevated. She purchased from the newsdealer in the cubbyhole beneath them a next month’s magazine and a to-morrow morning’s paper and, with these tucked under one plump arm, she walked. She walked two blocks north on Sixth Avenue; turned and went west. But not far west. Westward half a block only, to the place where the gay green awning marked Club Français paints a stripe of shade across the glimmering sidewalk. Under this awning Mrs. Brady halted briefly, to remark to the six-foot doorman that it looked like rain and to await his performance of his professional duty. When the small green door yawned open, she sighed deeply and plodded in.

The foyer was a blackness, an airless velvet blackness like the inside of a jeweller’s box. Four drum-shaped lamps of golden silk suspended from the ceiling gave it light (a very little) and formed the jewels: gold signets, those, or cuff-links for a giant. At the far end of the foyer there were black stairs, faintly dusty, rippling upward toward an amber radiance. Mrs. Brady approached and ponderously mounted the stairs, clinging with one fist to the mangy velvet rope that railed their edge.

From the top, Miss Lena Levin observed the ascent. Miss Levin was the checkroom girl. She had dark-at-the-roots blonde hair and slender hips upon which, in moments of leisure, she wore her hands, like buckles of ivory loosely attached. This was a moment of leisure. Miss Levin waited behind her counter. Row upon row of hooks, empty as yet, and seeming to beckon--wee curved fingers of iron--waited behind her.

“Late,” said Miss Levin, “again.”

“Go wan!” said Mrs. Brady. “It’s only ten to ten. _Whew!_ Them _stairs_!”

She leaned heavily, sideways, against Miss Levin’s counter, and, applying one palm to the region of her heart, appeared at once to listen and to count. “Feel!” she cried then in a pleased voice.

Miss Levin obediently felt.

“Them stairs,” continued Mrs. Brady darkly, “with my bad heart, will be the death of me. Whew! Well, dearie? What’s the news?”

“You got a paper,” Miss Levin languidly reminded her.

“Yeah!” agreed Mrs. Brady with sudden vehemence. “I got a paper!” She slapped it upon the counter. “An’ a lot of time I’ll get to _read_ my paper, won’t I now? On a Saturday night!” She moaned. “Other nights is bad enough, dear knows--but _Saturday_ nights! How I dread ’em! Every Saturday night I say to my daughter, I say, ‘Geraldine, I can’t,’ I say, ‘I can’t go through it again, an’ that’s all there is to it,’ I say. ‘I’ll _quit_!’ I say. An’ I _will_, too!” added Mrs. Brady firmly, if indefinitely.

Miss Levin, in defense of Saturday nights, mumbled some vague something about tips.

“Tips!” Mrs. Brady hissed it. She almost spat it. Plainly money was nothing, nothing at all, to this lady. “I just wish,” said Mrs. Brady, and glared at Miss Levin, “I just wish _you_ had to spend one Saturday night, just one, in that dressing room! Bein’ pushed an’ stepped on and near knocked down by that gang of hussies, an’ them orderin’ an’ bossin’ you ’round like you was _black_, an’ usin’ your things an’ then sayin’ they’re sorry, they got no change, they’ll be back. Yah! They _never_ come back!”

“There’s Mr. Costello,” whispered Miss Levin through lips that, like a ventriloquist’s, scarcely stirred.

“An’ as I was sayin’,” Mrs. Brady said at once brightly, “I got to leave you. Ten to ten, time I was on the job.”

She smirked at Miss Levin, nodded, and right-about-faced. There, indeed, Mr. Costello was. Mr. Billy Costello, manager, proprietor, monarch of all he surveyed. From the doorway of the big room, where the little tables herded in a ring around the waxen floor, he surveyed Mrs. Brady, and in such a way that Mrs. Brady, momentarily forgetting her bad heart, walked fast, scurried faster, almost ran.

The door of her domain was set politely in an alcove, beyond silken curtains looped up at the sides. Mrs. Brady reached it breathless, shouldered it open, and groped for the electric switch. Lights sprang up, a bright white blaze, intolerable for an instant to the eyes, like sun on snow. Blinking, Mrs. Brady shut the door.

The room was a spotless, white-tiled place, half beauty shop, half dressing room. Along one wall stood washstands, sturdy triplets in a row, with pale-green liquid soap in glass balloons afloat above them. Against the opposite wall there was a couch. A third wall backed an elongated glass-topped dressing table; and over the dressing table and over the washstands long rectangular sheets of mirror reflected lights, doors, glossy tiles, lights multiplied....

Mrs. Brady moved across this glitter like a thick dark cloud in a hurry. At the dressing table she came to a halt, and upon it she laid her newspaper, her magazine, and her purse--a black purse worn gray with much clutching. She divested herself of a rusty black coat and a hat of the mushroom persuasion, and hung both up in a corner cupboard which she opened by means of one of a quite preposterous bunch of keys. From a nook in the cupboard she took down a lace-edged handkerchief with long streamers. She untied the streamers and tied them again around her chunky black alpaca waist. The handkerchief became an apron’s baby cousin.

Mrs. Brady relocked the cupboard door, fumbled her keyring over, and unlocked a capacious drawer of the dressing table. She spread a fresh towel on the plate-glass top, in the geometrical centre, and upon the towel she arranged with care a procession of things fished from the drawer. Things for the hair. Things for the complexion. Things for the eyes, the lashes, the brows, the lips, and the finger nails. Things in boxes and things in jars and things in tubes and tins. Also, an ash tray, matches, pins, a tiny sewing kit, a pair of scissors. Last of all, a hand-printed sign, a nudging sort of sign:

NOTICE!

These articles, placed here for your convenience, are the property of
the _maid_.

And directly beneath the sign, propping it up against the looking-glass, a china saucer, in which Mrs. Brady now slyly laid decoy money: two quarters and two dimes, in four-leaf-clover formation.

Another drawer of the dressing table yielded a bottle of bromo seltzer, a bottle of aromatic spirits of ammonia, a tin of sodium bicarbonate, and a teaspoon. These were lined up on a shelf above the couch.

Mrs. Brady was now ready for anything. And (from the grim, thin pucker of her mouth) expecting it.

Music came to her ears. Rather, the beat of music, muffled, rhythmic, remote. _Umpa-um, umpa-um, umpa-um-umm_--Mr. “Fiddle” Baer and his band, hard at work on the first foxtrot of the night. It was teasing, foot-tapping music; but the large solemn feet of Mrs. Brady were still. She sat on the couch and opened her newspaper; and for some moments she read uninterruptedly, with special attention to the murders, the divorces, the breaches of promise, the funnies.

Then the door swung inward, admitting a blast of Mr. “Fiddle” Baer’s best, a whiff of perfume, and a girl.

Mrs. Brady put her paper away.

The girl was _petite_ and darkly beautiful; wrapped in fur and mounted on tall jewelled heels. She entered humming the ragtime song the orchestra was playing, and while she stood near the dressing table, stripping off her gloves, she continued to hum it softly to herself:

“Oh, I know my baby loves me,
I can tell my baby loves me.”

Here the dark little girl got the left glove off, and Mrs. Brady glimpsed a platinum wedding ring.

“’Cause there ain’t no maybe
In my baby’s
Eyes.”

The right glove came off. The dark little girl sat down in one of the chairs that faced the dressing table. She doffed her wrap, casting it carelessly over the chair back. It had a cloth-of-gold lining, and “Paris” was embroidered in curlicues on the label. Mrs. Brady hovered solicitously near.

The dark little girl, still humming, looked over the articles “placed here for your convenience,” and picked up the scissors. Having cut off a very small hangnail with the air of one performing a perilous major operation, she seized and used the manicure buffer, and after that the eyebrow pencil. Mrs. Brady’s mind, hopefully calculating the tip, jumped and jumped again like a taximeter.

“Oh, I know my baby loves me----”

The dark little girl applied powder and lipstick belonging to herself. She examined the result searchingly in the mirror and sat back, satisfied. She cast some silver _Klink! Klink!_ into Mrs. Brady’s saucer, and half rose. Then, remembering something, she settled down again.

The ensuing thirty seconds were spent by her in pulling off her platinum wedding ring, tying it in a corner of a lace handkerchief, and tucking the handkerchief down the bodice of her tight white velvet gown.

“There!” she said.

She swooped up her wrap and trotted toward the door, jewelled heels merrily twinkling.

“’Cause there ain’t no maybe----”

The door fell shut.

Almost instantly it opened again, and another girl came in. A blonde, this. She was pretty in a round-eyed, babyish way; but Mrs. Brady, regarding her, mentally grabbed the spirits of ammonia bottle. For she looked terribly ill. The round eyes were dull, the pretty, silly little face was drawn. The thin hands, picking at the fastenings of a specious beaded bag, trembled and twitched.

Mrs. Brady cleared her throat. “Can I do something for you, miss?”

Evidently the blonde girl had believed herself alone in the dressing room. She started violently and glanced up, panic in her eyes. Panic, and something else. Something very like murderous hate--but for an instant only, so that Mrs. Brady, whose perceptions were never quick, missed it altogether.

“A glass of water?” suggested Mrs. Brady.

“No,” said the girl, “no.” She had one hand in the beaded bag now. Mrs. Brady could see it moving, causing the bag to squirm like a live thing, and the fringe to shiver. “Yes!” she cried abruptly. “A glass of water--please--you get it for me.”

She dropped on to the couch. Mrs. Brady scurried to the water cooler in the corner, pressed the spigot with a determined thumb. Water trickled out thinly. Mrs. Brady pressed harder, and scowled, and thought, “Something’s wrong with this thing. I mustn’t forget, next time I see Mr. Costello----”

When again she faced her patient, the patient was sitting erect. She was thrusting her clenched hand back into the beaded bag again.

She took only a sip of the water, but it seemed to help her quite miraculously. Almost at once colour came to her cheeks, life to her eyes. She grew young again--as young as she was. She smiled up at Mrs. Brady.

“Well!” she exclaimed. “What do you know about that!” She shook her honey-coloured head. “I can’t imagine what came over me.”

“Are you better now?” inquired Mrs. Brady.

“Yes. Oh, yes. I’m better now. You see,” said the blonde girl confidentially, “we were at the theatre, my boy friend and I, and it was hot and stuffy--I guess that must have been the trouble.” She paused, and the ghost of her recent distress crossed her face. “God! I thought that last act _never_ would end!” she said.

While she attended to her hair and complexion, she chattered gaily to Mrs. Brady, chattered on with scarcely a stop for breath, and laughed much. She said, among other things, that she and her “boy friend” had not known one another very long, but that she was “ga-ga” about him. “He is about me, too,” she confessed. “He thinks I’m grand.”

She fell silent then, and in the looking-glass her eyes were shadowed, haunted. But Mrs. Brady, from where she stood, could not see the looking-glass; and half a minute later the blonde girl laughed and began again. When she went out she seemed to dance out on little winged feet; and Mrs. Brady, sighing, thought it must be nice to be young ... and happy like that.

The next arrivals were two. A tall, extremely smart young woman in black chiffon entered first, and held the door open for her companion; and the instant the door was shut, she said, as though it had been on the tip of her tongue for hours, “Amy, what under the sun _happened_?”

Amy, who was brown-eyed, brown-bobbed-haired, and patently annoyed about something, crossed to the dressing table and flopped into a chair before she made reply.

“Nothing,” she said wearily then.

“That’s nonsense!” snorted the other. “Tell me. Was it something she said? She’s a tactless ass, of course. Always was.”

“No, not anything she said. It was----” Amy bit her lip. “All right! I’ll tell you. Before we left your apartment I just happened to notice that Tom had disappeared. So I went to look for him--I wanted to ask him if he’d remembered to tell the maid where we were going--Skippy’s subject to croup, you know, and we always leave word. Well, so I went into the kitchen, thinking Tom might be there mixing cocktails--and there he was--and there _she_ was!”

The full red mouth of the other young woman pursed itself slightly. Her arched brows lifted. “Well?”

Her matter-of-factness appeared to infuriate Amy. “He was _kissing_ her!” she flung out.

“Well?” said the other again. She chuckled softly and patted Amy’s shoulder, as if it were the shoulder of a child. “You’re surely not going to let _that_ spoil your whole evening? Amy _dear_! Kissing may once have been serious and significant--but it isn’t nowadays. Nowadays, it’s like shaking hands. It means nothing.”

But Amy was not consoled. “I hate her!” she cried desperately. “Red-headed _thing_! Calling me ‘darling’ and ‘honey,’ and s-sending me handkerchiefs for C-Christmas--and then sneaking off behind closed doors and k-kissing my h-h-husband....”

At this point Amy quite broke down, but she recovered herself sufficiently to add with venom, “I’d like to slap her!”

“Oh, oh, oh,” smiled the tall young woman, “I wouldn’t do that!”

Amy wiped her eyes with what might well have been one of the Christmas handkerchiefs, and confronted her friend. “Well, what _would_ you do, Claire? If you were I?”

“I’d forget it,” said Claire, “and have a good time. I’d kiss somebody myself. You’ve no idea how much better you’d feel!”

“I don’t do----” Amy began indignantly; but as the door behind her opened and a third young woman--red-headed, earringed, exquisite--lilted in, she changed her tone. “Oh, hello!” she called sweetly, beaming at the newcomer via the mirror. “We were wondering what had become of you!”

The red-headed girl, smiling easily back, dropped her cigarette on the floor and crushed it out with a silver-shod toe. “Tom and I were talking to ‘Fiddle’ Baer,” she explained. “He’s going to play ‘Clap Yo’ Hands’ next, because it’s my favourite. Lend me a comb, will you, somebody?”

“There’s a comb there,” said Claire, indicating Mrs. Brady’s business comb.

“But imagine using it!” murmured the red-headed girl. “Amy, darling, haven’t you one?”

Amy produced a tiny comb from her rhinestone purse. “Don’t forget to bring it when you come,” she said, and stood up. “I’m going on out, I want to tell Tom something.”

She went.

The red-headed young woman and the tall black-chiffon one were alone, except for Mrs. Brady. The red-headed one beaded her incredible lashes. The tall one, the one called Claire, sat watching her. Presently she said, “Sylvia, look here.” And Sylvia looked. Anybody, addressed in that tone, would have.

“There is one thing,” Claire went on quietly, holding the other’s eyes, “that I want understood. And that is, ‘_Hands off!_’ Do you hear me?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You do know what I mean!”

The red-headed girl shrugged her shoulders. “Amy told you she saw us, I suppose.”

“Precisely. And,” went on Claire, gathering up her possessions and rising, “as I said before, you’re to keep away.” Her eyes blazed sudden white-hot rage. “Because, as you very well know, he belongs to _me_,” she said, and departed, slamming the door.

* * * * *

Between eleven o’clock and one Mrs. Brady was very busy indeed. Never for more than a moment during those two hours was the dressing room empty. Often it was jammed, full to overflowing with curled cropped heads, with ivory arms and shoulders, with silk and lace and chiffon, with legs. The door flapped in and back, in and back. The mirrors caught and held--and lost--a hundred different faces. Powder veiled the dressing table with a thin white dust; cigarette stubs, scarlet at the tips, choked the ash-receiver. Dimes and quarters clattered into Mrs. Brady’s saucer--and were transferred to Mrs. Brady’s purse. The original seventy cents remained. That much, and no more, would Mrs. Brady gamble on the integrity of womankind.

She earned her money. She threaded needles and took stitches. She powdered the backs of necks. She supplied towels for soapy, dripping hands. She removed a speck from a teary blue eye and pounded the heel on a slipper. She curled the straggling ends of a black bob and a gray bob, pinned a velvet flower on a lithe round waist, mixed three doses of bicarbonate of soda, took charge of a shed pink-satin girdle, collected, on hands and knees, several dozen fake pearls that had wept from a broken string.

She served chorus girls and schoolgirls, gay young matrons and gayer young mistresses, a lady who had divorced four husbands, and a lady who had poisoned one, the secret (more or less) sweetheart of a Most Distinguished Name, and the Brains of a bootleg gang.... She saw things. She saw a yellow check, with the ink hardly dry. She saw four tiny bruises, such as fingers might make, on an arm. She saw a girl strike another girl, not playfully. She saw a bundle of letters some man wished he had not written, safe and deep in a brocaded handbag.

* * * * *

About midnight the door flew open and at once was pushed shut, and a gray-eyed, lovely child stood backed against it, her palms flattened on the panels at her sides, the draperies of her white chiffon gown settling lightly to rest around her.

There were already five damsels of varying ages in the dressing room. The latest arrival marked their presence with a flick of her eyes and, standing just where she was, she called peremptorily, “Maid!”

Mrs. Brady, standing just where _she_ was, said, “Yes, miss?”

“Please come here,” said the girl.

Mrs. Brady, as slowly as she dared, did so.

The girl lowered her voice to a tense half-whisper. “Listen! Is there any way I can get out of here except through this door I came in?”

Mrs. Brady stared at her stupidly.

“Any window?” persisted the girl. “Or anything?”

Here they were interrupted by the exodus of two of the damsels-of-varying ages. Mrs. Brady opened the door for them--and in so doing caught a glimpse of a man who waited in the hall outside, a debonair, old-young man with a girl’s furry wrap hung over his arm, and his hat in his hand.

The door clicked. The gray-eyed girl moved out from the wall, against which she had flattened herself--for all the world like one eluding pursuit in a cinema.

“What about that window?” she demanded, pointing.

“That’s all the farther it opens,” said Mrs. Brady.

“Oh! And it’s the only one--isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“Damn,” said the girl. “Then there’s _no_ way out?”

“No way but the door,” said Mrs. Brady testily.

The girl looked at the door. She seemed to look _through_ the door, and to despise and to fear what she saw. Then she looked at Mrs. Brady. “Well,” she said, “then I s’pose the only thing to do is to stay in here.”

She stayed. Minutes ticked by. Jazz crooned distantly, stopped, struck up again. Other girls came and went. Still the gray-eyed girl sat on the couch, with her back to the wall and her shapely legs crossed, smoking cigarettes, one from the stub of another.

After a long while she said, “Maid!”

“Yes, miss?”

“Peek out that door, will you, and see if there’s anyone standing there.”

Mrs. Brady peeked, and reported that there was. There was a gentleman with a little bit of a black moustache standing there. The same gentleman, in fact, who was standing there “just after you come in.”

“Oh, Lord,” sighed the gray-eyed girl. “Well ... I can’t stay here all _night_, that’s one sure thing.”

She slid off the couch, and went listlessly to the dressing table. There she occupied herself for a minute or two. Suddenly, without a word, she darted out.

Thirty seconds later Mrs. Brady was elated to find two crumpled one-dollar bills lying in her saucer. Her joy, however, died a premature death. For she made an almost simultaneous second discovery. A saddening one. Above all, a puzzling one.

“Now what for,” marvelled Mrs. Brady, “did she want to walk off with them _scissors_?”

This at twelve-twenty-five.

At twelve-thirty a quartette of excited young things burst in, babbling madly. All of them had their evening wraps with them; all talked at once. One of them, a Dresden china girl with a heart-shaped face, was the centre of attention. Around her the rest fluttered like monstrous butterflies; to her they addressed their shrill exclamatory cries. “Babe,” they called her.

Mrs. Brady heard snatches: “Not in this state unless....” “Well, you can in Maryland, Jimmy says.” “Oh, there must be some place nearer than....” “Isn’t this _marvellous_?” “When did it happen, Babe? When did you decide?”

“Just now,” the girl with the heart-shaped face sang softly, “when we were dancing.”

The babble resumed, “But listen, Babe, what’ll your mother and father...?” “Oh, never mind, let’s hurry.” “Shall we be warm enough with just these thin wraps, do you think? Babe, will you be warm enough? Sure?”

Powder flew and little pocket combs marched through bright marcels. Flushed cheeks were painted pinker still.

“My pearls,” said Babe, “are _old_. And my dress and my slippers are _new_. Now, let’s see--what can I _borrow_?”

A lace handkerchief, a diamond bar pin, a pair of earrings were proffered. She chose the bar pin, and its owner unpinned it proudly, gladly.

“I’ve got blue garters!” exclaimed another girl.

“Give me one, then,” directed Babe. “I’ll trade with you.... There! That fixes that.”

More babbling, “Hurry! Hurry up!” ... “Listen, are you _sure_ we’ll be warm enough? Because we can stop at my house, there’s nobody home.” “Give me that puff, Babe, I’ll powder your back.” “And just to think a week ago you’d never even met each other!” “Oh, hurry _up_, let’s get _started_!” “I’m ready.” “So’m I.” “Ready, Babe? You look adorable.” “Come on, everybody.”

They were gone again, and the dressing room seemed twice as still and vacant as before.

A minute of grace, during which Mrs. Brady wiped the spilled powder away with a damp gray rag. Then the door jumped open again. Two evening gowns appeared and made for the dressing table in a bee line. Slim tubular gowns they were, one silver, one palest yellow. Yellow hair went with the silver gown, brown hair with the yellow. The silver-gowned, yellow-haired girl wore orchids on her shoulder, three of them, and a flashing bracelet on each fragile wrist. The other girl looked less prosperous; still, you would rather have looked at her.

Both ignored Mrs. Brady’s cosmetic display as utterly as they ignored Mrs. Brady, producing full field equipment of their own.

“Well,” said the girl with the orchids, rouging energetically, “how do you like him?”

“Oh-h--all right.”

“Meaning, ‘Not any,’ hmm? I suspected as much!” The girl with the orchids turned in her chair and scanned her companion’s profile with disapproval. “See here, Marilee,” she drawled, “are you going to be a damn fool _all_ your life?”

“He’s fat,” said Marilee dreamily. “Fat, and--greasy, sort of. I mean, greasy in his mind. Don’t you know what I mean?”

“I know _one_ thing,” declared the girl with orchids. “I know Who He Is! And if I were you, that’s all I’d need to know. _Under the circumstances._”

The last three words, stressed meaningly, affected the girl called Marilee curiously. She grew grave. Her lips and lashes drooped. For some seconds she sat frowning a little, breaking a black-sheathed lipstick in two and fitting it together again.

“She’s worse,” she said finally, low.

“Worse?”

Marilee nodded.

“Well,” said the girl with orchids, “there you are. It’s the climate. She’ll never be anything _but_ worse, if she doesn’t get away. Out West, or somewhere.”

“I know,” murmured Marilee.

The other girl opened a tin of eye shadow. “Of course,” she said drily, “suit yourself. She’s not _my_ sister.”

Marilee said nothing. Quiet she sat, breaking the lipstick, mending it, breaking it.

“Oh, well,” she breathed finally, wearily, and straightened up. She propped her elbows on the plate-glass dressing-table top and leaned toward the mirror, and with the lipstick she began to make her coral-pink mouth very red and gay and reckless and alluring.

* * * * *

Nightly at one o’clock Vane and Moreno dance for the Club Français. They dance a tango, they dance a waltz; then, by way of encore, they do a Black Bottom, and a trick of their own called the Wheel. They dance for twenty, thirty minutes. And while they dance you do not leave your table--for this is what you came to see. Vane and Moreno. The New York thrill. The sole justification for the five-dollar couvert extorted by Billy Costello.

From one until half-past, then, was Mrs. Brady’s recess. She had been looking forward to it all the evening long. When it began--when the opening chords of the tango music sounded stirringly from the room outside--Mrs. Brady brightened. With a right good will she sped the parting guests.

Alone, she unlocked her cupboard and took out her magazine--the magazine she had bought three hours before. Heaving a great breath of relief and satisfaction, she plumped herself on the couch and fingered the pages. Immediately she was absorbed, her eyes drinking up printed lines, her lips moving soundlessly.

The magazine was Mrs. Brady’s favourite. Its stories were true stories, taken from life (so the editor said); and to Mrs. Brady they were live, vivid threads in the dull, drab pattern of her night.

SINGING WOMAN

BY ADA JACK CARVER

From _Harper’s_

Little by little the Joyous Coast was changing.

The old rutted dirt road that fringed the Cane had been abandoned. The highways cut through the swamps and marshy lands and fields full of corn and refused to follow the whim of the river. It seemed to old Henriette relentless and terrible. It even ploughed its way through people’s dooryards, rooting up ancient landmarks: oaks and chinas and gnarled crêpe myrtles, their branches bowed to the earth with bloom--trees under which Henriette in her day had been courted and won.

Isle Brevelle, where the French mulattoes live, is not lonely and strange as is an island lost in the sea. With the river curving about it, it is like a maid in the arms of a lover who woos her forever: “_Lie still, Adored One. Are my arms not around you? Do you not feel the beat of my heart? Behold the gifts I have brought, the fruit and the flowers I lay at your feet. You are round and shining like the sun, more beautiful than the day_----”

The young people on Isle Brevelle liked the changing order, the feeling of unrest and impatience. Now, in the long summer evenings they could get in cars and go to town, to see the sights; or take in the coloured picture show up on the hill. “_Mais non_, we don’t speak to them niggers,” they assured old Henriette. “We don’t have nothing to do with them black folks.”

But all this saddened Henriette. For generations now her people had guarded the blood in their veins. Ignored by the whites, ignoring and scorning the blacks, they had kept themselves to themselves. But now there was change all about them. Something was in the air.... In her black spreading skirts, with her black kerchief about her head, Henriette sat on the gallery and watched the gravelled road that was straight and white and went on and on, taking the young folks with it.... People didn’t die, either, like they used to do, properly in their beds, with time to receive the sacrament and be shrived for their sins. They died just any and everywhere, bumped off by trains or the automobiles that ploughed by on the highway. No wonder the buryings were often hurried, unworthy affairs, without bell or book; to say nothing of singing woman!

Henriette and her crony, fat old Josephine Remon, were the only singing women left on Isle Brevelle. Time was when a singing woman was as necessary as a priest, when no one who was anything could be buried without a professional mourner. In those days Henriette and Josephine were looked up to and respected: the place of honour at table, the best seat by the fireside, the most desirable pew in the church. Finally, instead of being sought after, a wailing woman had to offer her services. Nowadays people seemed to have lost the fear, the dignity of death.

It was the same way with midwifery. Young women nowadays engaged trained nurses, or went to town to the hospitals to have their babies. Nowadays people didn’t care _how_ they died or were born. They just came in and went out of the world, any old way.... All this troubled Henriette, and she sat in her corner and mumbled and grumbled to God about it, “Look like nothing ain’t right, not what it used to be....”

It had been nearly ten years now since Henriette had wailed for a funeral. Josephine had had the last one, when old Madame Rivet died, six years ago. That made ninety-eight for Josephine and ninety-nine for herself. She was one funeral ahead. How proud she was of her record! She, Henriette, had sung for more buryings than any singing woman in the parish. Of course, old Josephine ran her a mighty close second. Henriette kept an account of her own and Josephine’s funerals, in a little black memorandum book locked up in her armoire. On one page was her own name, Henriette; and underneath it ninety-nine crosses in neat little rows of five. On the opposite page was Josephine’s name, and beneath it ninety-eight crosses, in neat little rows of five. Well, they had served Death long and faithfully, she and Josephine; where Death had gone they had followed.... Time was, when, as a special treat, Henriette would take out her funeral book and name the crosses: “This one was Marie Lombard, and this one Celeste, her daughter. Here was Henri, what died the time the cholera come, in 1860.”

Now no one ever thought of Henriette’s funeral book. Six years, since Madame Rivet died, it had lain in her armoire. Sometimes she wondered sadly if she would ever wail again. For on Isle Brevelle there was but one person left who, when he died, would want a wailing woman. This person was Toni Philbert, the only soul on Isle Brevelle older than Henriette. Toni and Henriette and Josephine had been young folks together. Now it had got to be a sort of game between the two women as to who would get Toni when Toni died. “If I get Toni,” Henriette would say, “me, I’ll have two more crosses than you. I’ll have a hundred.” And Josephine, sitting fat in her chair, would chuckle, “_Mais non_, and if I get him, we’ll be even, Etta, my friend.”

Toni himself, an old, old man, sans teeth, sans everything, was pleased with the fuss they made over him. Sometimes he would joke with them when he met them at church. “Well, well, old uns. I’m here yet. Hee! Hee! I’ll outlive both you girls. Just wait--me, I show you!”

* * * * *

The days on Isle Brevelle were long and filled with the drowsy chatter of ducks and fat red hens. Henriette’s prayers for those in purgatory took up part of the time. But a person can’t pray forever! Nothing to do but sit and think of the past, and of death and dying. Henriette had always, even when a child, known something lovely and secret about death. What it was she could not have told; but her knowledge made her a good wailing woman. She minded the time, long ago, when the husband of Rose, Toni’s daughter, died and left Rose a widow. Such a pretty slip of a thing and so white in her sorrow! Henriette had, of course, done her duty to the dead; she had wailed and sung and beat the earth: “_Under a tree by the river I saw them digging a young grave. Stricken one, desired of Heaven, your eyes that will not look at me--what do they see? How long before I can go to you, as I used to go?... down by the water where the reeds are singing...._” But after the funeral (Mother forgive her!), she had gone back to comfort Rose, and unsay all she had said. “Look, Rose, honey, don’t take on so. A girl as fresh and sweet as you! Look, he is happy. And the world is full of lovers....” At Rose’s door grew the lily called “widow’s tear”--“widow’s tear” because the drop of dew in its heart dries so quickly when the broad, warm sun comes out....

Well, who should know more about death than she, Henriette ... she who had buried three husbands?

Sometimes when the weather was fine, and the sun not too hot or too bright, old Henriette would put on a clean “josie,” and take her stick and hobble down to Josephine’s house to sit and talk of old times. She would get one of her grandchildren to help her down in the ditch, beside the highroad, where she insisted on walking to avoid the automobiles. When there had been rain Henriette got her feet all wet and muddy, down in the ditch that way. When the weather was dry the automobiles, shrieking by, sprayed her from head to foot with a fine white dust. Sometimes she got into nettles, or cockleburs or ants. And once a rattlesnake had glided across her path. Her grandchildren, who loved her, were dismayed and indignant. “Ain’t you ’shame, Gran’mamma, walking down in the ditch! How come you don’t let us take you to Josephine’s in the car?” But Henriette was afraid of cars. “It ain’t far. I ruther walk.”