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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30351 ***
+
+THE CUP OF FURY
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS BY RUPERT HUGHES
+
+ The Cup of Fury
+ The Unpardonable Sin
+ We Can't Have Everything
+ In a Little Town
+ The Thirteenth Commandment
+ Clipped Wings
+ What Will People Say?
+ The Last Rose of Summer
+ Empty Pockets
+ Long Ever Ago
+
+HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
+
+Established 1817
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "It would be nice to be married," Marie Louise reflected,
+"if one could stay single at the same time."]
+
+
+
+
+THE CUP OF FURY
+
+A Novel of Cities and Shipyards
+
+BY RUPERT HUGHES
+
+Author of "We Can't Have Everything" "The Unpardonable Sin" etc.
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY HENRY RALEIGH
+
+HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
+
+NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+
+
+
+THE CUP OF FURY
+
+ Copyright, 1919, by Harper & Brothers
+ Printed in the United States of America
+ Published May, 1919
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  "It would be nice to be married," Marie Louise
+      reflected, "if one could stay single at the same
+      time."                                              Frontispiece
+                                                             Facing p.
+  He tried to swing her to the pommel, but she fought
+      herself free and came to the ground and was almost
+      trampled.                                                      3
+  "This is the life for me. I've been a heroine and a
+      war-worker about as long as I can."                           75
+  "'It's beautiful overhead if you're going that way,'"
+      Davidge quoted. He set out briskly, but Marie
+      Louise hung back. "Aren't you afraid to push on
+      when you can't see where you're going?" she
+      demanded.                                                     91
+  There was something hallowed and awesome about it all.
+      It had a cathedral majesty.                                  166
+  How quaint a custom it is for people who know each
+      other well and see each other in plain clothes
+      every day to get themselves up with meticulous
+      skill in the evening like Christmas parcels for
+      each other's examination.                                    235
+  "So I have already done something more for Germany.
+      That's splendid. Now tell me what else I can do."
+      Nicky was too intoxicated with his success to see
+      through her thin disguise.                                   270
+  Nobody recognized the lily-like beauty of Miss Webling
+      in the smutty-faced passer-boy crouching at
+      Sutton's elbow.                                              282
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+IN LONDON
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: He tried to swing her to the pommel, but she fought
+herself free and came to the ground and was almost trampled.]
+
+
+
+
+THE CUP OF FURY
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Then the big door swung back as if of itself. Marie Louise had felt
+that she would scream if she were kept a moment outside. The luxury of
+simply wishing the gate ajar gave her a fairy-book delight enhanced by
+the pleasant deference of the footman, whose face seemed to be hung on
+the door like a Japanese mask.
+
+Marie Louise rejoiced in the dull splendor of the hall. The obsolete
+gorgeousness of the London home had never been in good taste, but had
+grown as lovable with years as do the gaudy frumperies of a rich old
+relative. All the good, comfortable shelter of wealth won her blessing
+now as never before. The stairway had something of the grand manner,
+too, but it condescended graciously to escort her up to her own room;
+and there, she knew, was a solitude where she could cry as hard as she
+wanted to, and therefore usually did not want to. Besides, her mood
+now was past crying for.
+
+She was afraid of the world, afraid of the light. She felt the
+cave-impulse to steal into a deep nook and cower there till her heart
+should be replenished with courage automatically, as ponds are fed
+from above.
+
+Marie Louise wanted walls about her, and stillness, and people shut
+out. She was in one of the moods when the soul longs to gather its
+faculties together in a family, making one self of all its selves.
+Marie Louise had known privation and homelessness and the perils they
+bring a young woman, and now she had riches and a father and mother
+who were great people in a great land, and who had adopted her into
+their own hearts, their lives, their name. But to-day she asked
+nothing more than a deep cranny in a dark cave.
+
+She would have said that no human voice or presence could be anything
+but a torture to her. And yet, when she hurried up the steps, she was
+suddenly miraculously restored to cheerfulness by the tiny explosion
+of a child's laughter instantly quenched. She knew that she was about
+to be ambushed as usual. She must pretend to be completely surprised
+once more, and altogether terrified with her perfect regularity.
+
+Her soul had been so utterly surprised and terrified in the outer
+world that this infantile parody was curiously welcome, since nothing
+keeps the mind in balance on the tight-rope of sanity like the
+counterweight that comedy furnishes to tragedy, farce to frenzy, and
+puerility to solemnity.
+
+The children called her "Auntie," but they were not hers except
+through the adoption of a love that had to claim some kinship. They
+looked like her children, though--so much so, indeed, that strangers
+thought that she was their young mother. But it was because she looked
+like their mother, who had died, that the American girl was a member
+of this British household, inheriting some of its wealth and much of
+its perilous destiny.
+
+She had been ambuscaded in the street to-day by demons not of faery,
+but of fact, that had leaped out at her from nowhere. It solaced her
+somehow to burlesque the terror that had whelmed her, and, now that
+she was assailed by ruthless thugs of five and seven years, the
+shrieks she had not dared to release in the street she gave forth with
+vigor, as two nightgowned tots flung themselves at her with
+milk-curdling cries of:
+
+"Boo-ooh!"
+
+Holding up pink fat hands for pistols, they snapped their thumbs at
+her and said:
+
+"Bang! Bang!"
+
+And she emitted most amusing squeals of anguish and staggered back,
+stammering:
+
+"Oh, p-p-please, Mr. Robbobber and Miss Burgurgular, take my l-l-life
+but spare my m-m-money."
+
+She had been so genuinely scared before that she marred the sacred
+text now, and the First Murderer, who had all the conservative
+instincts of childhood, had to correct her misquotation of the sacred
+formula:
+
+"No, no, Auntie. Say, 'Take my money but spare my life!' Now we dot to
+do it all over."
+
+"I beg your pardon humbly," she said, and went back to be ambushed
+again. This time the boy had an inspiration. To murder and robbery he
+would add scalping.
+
+But Marie Louise was tired. She had had enough of fright, real or
+feigned, and refused to be scalped. Besides, she had been to the
+hairdresser's, and she explained that she really could not afford to
+be scalped. The boy was bitterly disappointed, and he grew furious
+when the untimely maid came for him and for his ruthless sister and
+demanded that they come to bed at once or be reported.
+
+As the warriors were dragged off to shameful captivity, Marie Louise,
+watching them, was suddenly shocked by the thought of how early in
+life humanity begins to revel in slaughter. The most innocent babes
+must be taught not to torture animals. Cruelty comes with them like a
+caul, or a habit brought in from a previous existence. They always
+almost murder their mothers and sometimes quite slay them when they
+are born. Their first pastimes are killing games, playing dead,
+stories of witches, cannibalistic ogres. The American Indian is the
+international nursery pet because of his traditional fiendishness.
+
+It seemed inconsistent, but it was historically natural that the boy
+interrupted in his massacre of his beloved aunt should hang back to
+squall that he would say his prayers only to her. Marie Louise glanced
+at her watch. She had barely time to dress for dinner, but the
+children had to be obeyed. She made one weak protest.
+
+"Fräulein hears your prayers."
+
+"But she's wented out."
+
+"Well, I'll hear them, then."
+
+"Dot to tell us fairy-'tory, too," said the girl.
+
+"All right, one fairy-'tory--"
+
+She went to the nursery, and the cherubs swarmed up to her lap
+demanding "somefin bluggy."
+
+Invention failed her completely. She hunted through her memory among
+the Grimms' fairy-tales. She could recall nothing that seemed sweet
+and guileless enough for these two lambs.
+
+All that she could think of seemed to be made up of ghoulish plots;
+of children being mistreated by harsh stepmothers; of their being
+turned over to peasants to slay; of their being changed into animals
+or birds; of their being seized by wolves, or by giants that drank
+blood and crunched children's bones as if they were reed birds; of
+hags that cut them up into bits or thrust them into ovens and cooked
+them for gingerbread. It occurred to her that all the German
+fairy-stories were murderously cruel. She felt a revulsion against
+each of the legends. But her mind could not find substitutes.
+
+After a period of that fearful ordeal when children tyrannize for
+romances that will not come, her mind grew mutinous and balked. She
+confessed her poverty of ideas.
+
+The girl, Bettina, sulked; the boy screamed:
+
+"Aw, botheration! We might as well say our prayers and go to bed."
+
+In the least pious of moods they dropped from her knees to their own
+and put their clasped hands across her lap. They became in a way
+hallowed by their attitude, and the world seemed good to her again as
+she looked down at the two children, beautiful as only children can
+be, innocent of wile, of hardship and of crime, safe at home and
+praying to their heavenly Father from whose presence they had so
+recently come.
+
+But as she brooded over them motherly and took strength from them as
+mothers do, she thought of other children in other countries orphaned
+in swarms, starving in multitudes, waiting for food like flocks of
+lambs in the blizzard of the war. She thought still more vividly of
+children flung into the ocean. She had seen these children at her
+knees fighting against bitter medicines, choking on them and blurting
+them out at mouth and nose and almost, it seemed, at eyes. So it was
+very vivid to her how children thrown into the sea must have gagged
+with terror at the bitter medicine of death, strangled and smothered
+as they drowned.
+
+She heard the prayers mumbled through, but at the hasty "Amen" she
+protested.
+
+"You didn't thank God for anything. Haven't you anything to thank God
+for?"
+
+If they had expressed any doubt, she would have told them of dozens of
+special mercies, but almost instantly they answered, "Oh yes!" They
+looked at each other, understood, nodded, clapped their hands, and
+chuckled with pride. Then they bent their heads, gabled their
+finger-tips, and the boy said:
+
+"We t'ank Dee, O Dod, for making sink dat old _Lusitania_." And the
+girl said, "A-men!"
+
+Marie Louise gave a start as if she had been stabbed. It was the loss
+of the _Lusitania_ that had first terrified her. She had just seen it
+announced on the placards of newsboys in London streets, and had fled
+home to escape from the vision, only to hear the children thank Heaven
+for it! She rose so suddenly that she flung the children back from
+their knees to their haunches. They stared up at her in wondering
+fear. She stepped outside the baleful circle and went striding up and
+down the room, fighting herself back to self-control, telling herself
+that the children were not to blame, yet finding them the more
+repulsive for their very innocence. The purer the lips, the viler the
+blasphemy.
+
+She was not able to restrain herself from denouncing them with all her
+ferocity. She towered over them and cried out upon them: "You wicked,
+wicked little beasts, how dare you put such loathsome words into a
+prayer! God must have gasped with horror in heaven at the shame of it.
+Wherever did you get so hateful an idea?"
+
+"Wicked your own self!" the boy snapped back. "Fräulein read it in the
+paper about the old boat, and she walked up and down the room like
+what you do, and she said, '_Ach, unser_ Dott--how dood you are to us,
+to make sink dat _Lusitania_!'"
+
+He was going on to describe her ecstasy, but Marie Louise broke in:
+"It's Fräulein's work, is it? I might have known that! Oh, the fiend,
+the harpy!"
+
+The boy did not know what a harpy was, but he knew that his beloved
+Fräulein was being called something, and he struck at Marie Louise
+fiercely, kicked at her shins and tried to bite her hands, screaming:
+"You shall not call our own precious Fräulein names. Harpy, your own
+self!"
+
+And the little girl struck and scratched and made a curdled face and
+echoed, "Harpy, your own self!"
+
+It hurt Marie Louise so extravagantly to be hated by these irascible
+cherubs that her anger vanished in regret. She pleaded: "But, my
+darlings, you don't know what you are saying. The _Lusitania_ was a
+beautiful ship--"
+
+The boy, Victor, was loyal always to his own: "She wasn't as beautiful
+as my yacht what I sail in the Round Pond."
+
+Marie Louise condescended to argue: "Oh yes, she was! She was a great
+ship, noble like Saint Paul's Cathedral, and she was loaded with
+passengers, men and women and children: and then suddenly she was
+ripped open and sunk, and little children like you were thrown into
+the water, into the deep, deep, deep ocean. And the big waves tore
+them from their mothers' arms and ran off with them, choking and
+strangling them and dragging them down and down--forever down."
+
+She was dizzied by the horde of visions mobbing her brain. Then the
+onrush of horror was checked abruptly as she saw the supercilious lad
+regarding her frenzy calmly. His comment was:
+
+"It served 'em jolly well right for bein' on 'at old boat."
+
+Marie Louise almost swooned with dread of such a soul. She shrank from
+the boy and groaned, "Oh, you toad, you little toad!"
+
+He was frightened a little by her disgust, and he took refuge in a
+higher authority. "Fräulein told us. And she knows."
+
+The bit lassiky stormed to his support: "She does so!" and drove it
+home with the last nail of feminine argument: "So there now!"
+
+Marie Louise retorted, weakly: "We'll see! We'll soon see!" And she
+rushed out of the room, like another little girl, straight to the door
+of Sir Joseph, where she knocked impatiently. His man appeared and
+murmured through a crevice: "Sorry, miss, but Seh Joseph is
+dressing."
+
+Marie Louise went to Lady Webling's door, and a maid came to whisper:
+"She is in her teb. We're having dinner at tome to-night, miss."
+
+Marie Louise nodded. Dinner must be served, and on time. It was the
+one remaining solemnity that must not be forgotten or delayed.
+
+She went to her own room. Her maid was in a stew about the hour, and
+the gown that was to be put on. Marie Louise felt that black was the
+only wear on such a Bartholomew's night. But Sir Joseph hated black so
+well that he had put a clause in his will against its appearance even
+at his own funeral. Marie Louise loved him dearly, but she feared his
+prejudices. She had an abject terror of offending him, because she
+felt that she owed everything she had, and was, to the whim of his
+good grace. Gratitude was a passion with her, and it doomed her, as
+all passions do, good or bad, to the penalties human beings pay for
+every excess of virtue or vice--if, indeed, vice is anything but an
+immoderate, untimely virtue.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Marie Louise let her maid select the gown. She was an exquisite
+picture as she stood before the long mirror and watched the buckling
+on of her armor, her armor of taffeta and velvet with the colors of
+sunlit leaves and noon-warmed flowers in carefully elected wrinkles
+assured with many a hook and eye. Her image was radiant and pliant and
+altogether love-worthy, but her thoughts were sad and stern.
+
+She was resolved that Fräulein should not remain in the house another
+night. She wondered that Sir Joseph had not ousted her from the family
+at the first crash of war. The old crone! She could have posed for one
+of the Grimms' most vulturine witches. But she had kept a civil tongue
+in her head till now; the children adored her, and Sir Joseph had
+influence enough to save her from being interned or deported.
+
+Hitherto, Marie Louise had felt sorry for her in her dilemma of being
+forced to live at peace in the country her own country was locked in
+war with. Now she saw that the woman's oily diplomacy was only for
+public use, and that all the while she was imbruing the minds of the
+little children with the dye of her own thoughts. The innocents
+naturally accepted everything she told them as the essence of truth.
+
+Marie Louise hoped to settle the affair before dinner, but by the time
+she was gowned and primped, the first premature guest had arrived like
+the rashest primrose, shy, surprised, and surprising. Sir Joseph had
+gone below already. Lady Webling was hull down on the stairway.
+
+Marie Louise saw that her protest must wait till after the dinner, and
+she followed to do her duty to the laws of hospitality.
+
+Sir Joseph liked to give these great affairs. He loved to eat and to
+see others eat. "The more the merrier," was his motto--one of the
+most truthless of the old saws. Little dinners at Sir Joseph's--what
+he called "on fameals"--would have been big dinners elsewhere. A big
+dinner was like a Lord Mayor's banquet. He needed only a crier at his
+back and a Petronius to immortalize his _gourmandise_.
+
+To-night he had great folk and small fry. Nobody pretended to know the
+names of everybody. Sir Joseph himself leaned heavily on the man who
+sang out the labels of the guests, and even then his wife whispered
+them to him as they came forward, and for a precaution, kept slipping
+them into the conversation as reminders.
+
+There were several Americans present: a Doctor and Mrs. Clinton
+Worthing who had come over with a special shipload of nurses. The ship
+had been fitted out by Mrs. Worthing, who had been Muriel Schuyler,
+daughter of the giant plutocrat, Jacob Schuyler, who was lending
+England millions of money weekly. A little American millionaire,
+Willie Enslee, living in England now on account of some scandal in his
+past, was there. He did not look romantic.
+
+Marie Louise had no genius for names, or faces, either. To-night she
+was frightened, and she made some horrible blunders, greeting the
+grisly Mr. Verrinder by the name of Mr. Hilary. The association was
+clear, for Mr. Hilary had called Mr. Verrinder atrocious names in
+Parliament; but it was like calling "Mr. Capulet" "Mr. Montague."
+Marie Louise tried to redeem her blunder by putting on an extra
+effusiveness for the sake of Mr. and Mrs. Norcross. Mrs. Norcross had
+only recently shaken off the name of Mrs. Patchett after a resounding
+divorce. So Marie Louise called her new husband by the name of her
+old, which made it very pleasant.
+
+Her wits were so badly dispersed that she gave up the attempt to take
+in the name of an American whom Lady Webling passed along to her as
+"Mr. Davidge, of the States." And he must have been somebody of
+importance, for even Sir Joseph got his name right. Marie Louise,
+however, disliked him cordially at once--for two reasons: first, she
+hated herself so much that she could not like anybody just then; next,
+this American was entirely too American. He was awkward and
+indifferent, but not at all with the easy amble and patrician
+unconcern of an English aristocrat.
+
+Marie Louise was American-born herself, and humbly born, at that, but
+she liked extreme Americanism never the more. Perhaps she was a bit of
+a snob, though fate was getting ready to beat the snobbery out of her.
+And hers was an unintentional, superficial snobbery, at worst. Some
+people said she was affected and that she aped the swagger dialect.
+But she had a habit of taking on the accent and color of her
+environments. She had not been in England a month before she spoke
+Piccadilly almost impeccably. She had caught French and German
+intonations with equal speed and had picked up music by ear with the
+same amazing facility in the days when certain kinds of music were her
+livelihood.
+
+In one respect her Englishness of accent was less an imitation or an
+affectation than a certain form of politeness and modesty. When an
+Englishwoman said, "Cahn't you?" it seemed tactless to answer, "No, I
+cann't." To respond to "Good mawning" with "Good morrning" had the
+effect of a contradiction or a correction. She had none of the
+shibboleth spirit that leads certain people to die or slay for a
+pronunciation. The pronunciation of the people she was talking to was
+good enough for her. She conformed also because she hated to see
+people listening less to what she said than to the Yankee way she said
+it.
+
+This man Davidge had a superb brow and a look of success, but he bored
+her before he reached her. She made ready for flight to some other
+group. Then he startled her--by being startled as he caught sight of
+her. When Lady Webling transmitted him with a murmur of his name and a
+tender, "My daughter," Davidge stopped short and mumbled:
+
+"I've had the pleasure of meeting you before, somewhere, haven't I?"
+
+Marie Louise snubbed him flatly. "I think not."
+
+He took the slap with a smile. "Did I hear Lady Webling call you her
+daughter?"
+
+Marie Louise did not explain, but answered, curtly, "Yes," with the
+aristocratic English parsimony that makes it almost "Yis."
+
+"Then you're right and I'm wrong. I beg your pardon."
+
+"Daon't mention it," said Marie Louise, and drew closer to Lady
+Webling and the oncoming guest. She had the decency to reproach
+herself for being beastly to the stranger, but his name slipped at
+once through the sieve of her memory.
+
+Destiny is the grandiose title we give to the grand total of a long
+column of accidents when we stop to tot up the figures. So we wait
+till that strange sum of accidents which we call a baby is added up
+into a living child of determined sex before we fasten a name that
+changes an it to a him or a her.
+
+The accidents that result in a love-affair, too, we look back on and
+outline into a definite road, and we call that Fate. We are great for
+giving names to selected fragments of the chaos of life.
+
+In after years Marie Louise and this man Davidge would see something
+mystic and intended in the meeting that was to be the detached
+prologue of their after conflicts. They would quite misremember what
+really happened--which was, that she retained no impression of him at
+all, and that he called himself a fool for mixing her with a girl he
+had met years and years before for just a moment, and had never
+forgotten because he had not known her well enough to forget her.
+
+He had reason enough to distrust his sanity for staring at a
+resplendent creature in a London drawing-room and imagining for a
+moment that she was a long-lost, long-sought girl of old dreams--a
+girl he had seen in a cheap vaudeville theater in a Western
+state. She was one of a musical team that played all sorts of
+instruments--xylophones, saxophones, trombones, accordions,
+cornets, comical instruments concealed in hats and umbrellas. This
+girl had played each of them in turn, in solo or with the rest of
+the group. The other mummers were coarse and vaude-vulgar, but she
+had captivated Davidge with her wild beauty, her magnetism, and
+the strange cry she put into her music.
+
+When she played the trombone she looked to him like one of the angels
+on a cathedral trumpeting an apocalyptic summons to the dead to bloom
+from their graves. When she played the cornet it was with a superhuman
+tone that shook his emotions almost insufferably. She had sung, too,
+in four voices--in an imitation of a bass, a tenor, a contralto, and
+finally as a lyric soprano, then skipping from one to the other. They
+called her "Mamise, the Quartet in One."
+
+Davidge had thought her marvelous and had asked the manager of the
+theater to introduce him. The manager thought him a young fool, and
+Davidge had felt himself one when he went back to the dingy stage,
+where he found Mamise among a troupe of trained animals waiting to go
+on. She was teasing a chittering, cigar-smoking trained ape on a
+bicycle, and she proved to be an extraordinarily ordinary, painfully
+plebeian girl, common in voice and diction, awkward and rather
+contemptuous of the stage-door Johnnie. Davidge had never ceased to
+blush, and blushed again now, when he recalled his labored compliment,
+"I expect to see your name in the electric lights some of these
+days--or nights, Miss Mamise."
+
+She had grumbled, "Much ubbliged!" and returned to the ape, while
+Davidge slunk away, ashamed.
+
+He had not forgotten that name, though the public had. He had never
+seen "Mamise" in the electric lights. He had never found the name in
+any dictionary. He had supposed her to be a foreigner--Spanish,
+Polish, Czech, French, or something. He had not been able to judge her
+nationality from the two gruff words, but he had often wondered what
+had happened to her. She might have been killed in a train wreck or
+been married to the ape-trainer or gone to some other horrible
+conclusion. He had pretty well buried her among his forgotten
+admirations and torments, when lo and behold! she emerged from a crowd
+of peeresses and plutocrats in London.
+
+He had sprung toward her with a wild look of recognition before he had
+had time to think it over. He had been rebuffed by a cold glance and
+then by an English intonation and a fashionable phrase. He decided
+that his memory had made a fool of him, and he stood off, humble and
+confused.
+
+But his eyes quarreled with his ears, and kept telling him that this
+tall beauty who ignored him so perfectly, so haughtily, was really his
+lost Mamise.
+
+If men would trust their intuitions oftener they would not go wrong so
+often, perhaps, since their best reasoning is only guesswork, after
+all. It was not going to be destiny that brought Davidge and Marie
+Louise together again so much as the man's hatred of leaving anything
+unfinished--even a dream or a vague desire. There was no shaking
+Davidge off a thing he determined on except as you shake off a
+snapping-turtle, by severing its body from its head.
+
+A little later Sir Joseph sought the man out and treated him
+respectfully, and Marie Louise knew he must be somebody. She found him
+staring at her over Sir Joseph's shoulder and puzzling about her. And
+this made her wretchedly uncomfortable, for perhaps, after all, she
+fretted, he had indeed met her somewhere before, somewhere in one of
+those odious strata she had passed through on her way up to the estate
+of being called daughter by Lady Webling.
+
+She forgot her misgivings and was restored to equanimity by the
+incursion of Polly Widdicombe and her husband. Polly was one of the
+best-dressed women in the world. Her husband had the look of the
+husband of the best-dressed woman in the world. Polly had a wiry
+voice, and made no effort to soften it, but she was tremendously
+smart. She giggled all the time and set people off in her vicinity,
+though her talk was rarely witty on its own account.
+
+Laughter rippled all through her life. She talked of her griefs in
+a plucky, riant way, making eternal fun of herself as a giddy fool.
+She carried a delightful jocundity wherever she went. She was
+aristocratic, too, in the postgraduate degree of being careless,
+reckless, superior even to good manners. She had a good heart and
+amiable feelings; these made manners enough.
+
+She had lineage as well, for her all-American family ran straight back
+into the sixteen hundreds, which was farther than many a duke dared
+trace his line. She had traveled the world; she had danced with kings,
+and had made two popes laugh and tweak her pointed chin. She wasn't
+afraid of anybody, not even of peasants and servants, or of being
+friendly with them, or angry with them.
+
+Marie Louise adored her. She felt that it would make no difference to
+Polly's affection if she found out all there was to find out about
+Marie Louise. And yet Polly's friendship did not have the dull
+certainty of indestructibility. Marie Louise knew that one word wrong
+or one act out of key might end it forever, and then Polly would be
+her loud and ardent enemy, and laugh at her instead of for her. Polly
+could hate as briskly as she could love.
+
+She was in one of her vitriolic moods now because of the _Lusitania_.
+
+"I shouldn't have come to-night," she said, "except that I want to
+talk to a lot of people about Germany. I want to tell everybody I know
+how much I loathe 'em all. 'The Hymn of Hate' is a lullaby to what I
+feel."
+
+Polly was also conducting a glorious war with Lady Clifton-Wyatt. Lady
+C.-W. had bullied everybody in London so successfully that she went
+straight up against Polly Widdicombe without a tremor. She got
+what-for, and everybody was delighted. The two were devoted enemies
+from then on, and it was beautiful to see them come together.
+
+Lady Clifton-Wyatt followed Polly up the receiving line to-night and
+invited a duel, but Polly was in no humor for a fight with anybody but
+Germans. She turned her full-orbed back on Lady C.-W. and, so to
+speak, gnashed her shoulder-blades at her. Lady C.-W. passed by
+without a word, and Marie Louise was glad to hide behind Polly, for
+Marie Louise was mortally afraid of Lady C.-W.
+
+She saw the American greet her as if he had met her before. Lady
+Clifton-Wyatt was positively polite to him. He must be a very great
+man.
+
+She heard Lady Clifton-Wyatt say something about, "How is the new ship
+coming on?" and the American said, "She's doing as well as could be
+expected."
+
+So he was a ship-builder. Marie Louise thought that his must be a
+heartbreaking business in these days when ships were being slaughtered
+in such numbers. She asked Polly and her husband if they knew him or
+his name.
+
+Widdicombe shook his head. Polly laughed at her husband. "How do you
+know? He might be your own mother, for all you can tell. Put on your
+distance-glasses, you poor fish." She turned to Marie Louise. "You
+know how near-sighted Tom is."
+
+"An excellent fault in a man," said Marie Louise.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Polly. "You can't trust even the blind ones.
+And you'll notice that when Tom comes to one of these décolleté
+dinners, he wears his reading-glasses."
+
+All this time Widdicombe was taking out his distance-glasses,
+taking off his reading-glasses and pouching them and putting them
+away, and putting on his distance-glasses, and from force of habit
+putting their pouch away. Then he stared at Davidge, took off his
+distance-glasses, found the case with difficulty, put them up,
+pocketed them, and stood blearing into space while he searched for
+his reading-glasses, found them, put the case back in his pocket and
+saddled his nose with the lenses.
+
+Polly waited in a mockery of patience and said:
+
+"Well, after all that, what?"
+
+"I don't know him," said Widdicombe.
+
+It was a good deal of an anticlimax to so much work.
+
+Polly said: "That proves nothing. Tom's got a near-memory, too. The
+man's a pest. If he didn't make so much money, I'd abandon him on a
+door-step."
+
+That was Polly's form of baby-talk. Everybody knew how she doted
+on Tom: she called him names as one scolds a pet dog. Widdicombe had
+the helpless manner of one, and was always at heel with Polly. But
+he was a Titan financially, and he was signing his name now to
+munitions-contracts as big as national debts.
+
+Marie Louise was summoned from the presence of the Widdicombes by one
+of Lady Webling's most mysterious glances, to meet a new-comer whom
+Lady Webling evidently regarded as a special treasure. Lady Webling
+was as wide as a screen, and she could always form a sort of alcove in
+front of her by turning her back on the company. She made such a nook
+now and, taking Marie Louise's hand in hers, put it in the hand of the
+tall and staring man whose very look Marie Louise found invasive. His
+handclasp was somehow like an illicit caress.
+
+How strange it is that with so much modesty going about, people should
+be allowed to wear their hands naked! The fashion of the last few
+years compelling the leaving off of gloves was not really very nice.
+Marie Louise realized it for the first time. Her fastidious right hand
+tried to escape from the embrace of the stranger's fingers, but they
+clung devil-fishily, and Lady Webling's soft cushion palm was there
+conniving in the abduction. And her voice had a wheedling tone:
+
+"This is my dear Nicky I have spoken of so much--Mr. Easton, you
+know."
+
+"Oh yes," said Marie Louise.
+
+"Be very nice to him," said Lady Webling. "He is taking you out to
+dinner."
+
+At that moment the butler appeared, solemn as a long-awaited priest,
+and there was such a slow crystallization as follows a cry of "Fall
+in!" to weary soldiers. The guests were soon in double file and on the
+march to the battlefield with the cooks.
+
+Nicky Easton still had Marie Louise's hand; he had carried it up into
+the crook of his right arm and kept his left hand over it for guard. A
+lady can hardly wrench loose from such an attention, but Marie Louise
+abhorred it.
+
+Nicky treated her as a sort of possession, and she resented his
+courtesies. He began too soon with compliments. One hates to have even
+a bunch of violets jabbed into one's nose with the command, "Smell!"
+
+She disliked his accent, too. There was a Germanic something in it as
+faint as the odor of high game. It was a time when the least hint of
+Teutonism carried the stench of death to British nostrils.
+
+Lady Webling and Sir Joseph were known to be of German birth, and
+their phrases carried the tang, but Sir Joseph had become a
+naturalized citizen ages ago and had won respect and affection a
+decade back. His lavish use of his money for charities and for great
+industries had won him his knighthood, and while there was a certain
+sniff of suspicion in certain fanatic quarters at the mention of his
+name, those who knew him well had so long ago forgotten his alien
+birth that they forgave it him now.
+
+As for Marie Louise, she no longer heeded the Prussic acid of his
+speech. She was as used to it as to his other little mannerisms. She
+did not think of the old couple as fat and awkward. She did not
+analyze their attributes or think of their features in detail. She
+thought of them simply as them. But Easton was new; he brought in a
+subtle whiff of the hated Germany that had done the _Lusitania_ to
+death.
+
+The fate of the ship made the dinner resemble a solemn wake. The
+triumphs of the chef were but funeral baked meats. The feast was
+brilliant and large and long, and it seemed criminal to see such waste
+of provender when so much of the world was hungry. The talk was almost
+all of the _Lusitania_ and the deep damnation of her taking off. Many
+of the guests had crossed the sea in her graceful shell, and they
+felt a personal loss as well as a bitterness of rage at the worst of
+the German sea crimes.
+
+Davidge was seated remotely from Marie Louise, far down the flowery
+lane of the table. She could not see him at all, for the candles and
+the roses. Just once she heard his voice in a lull. Its twang carried
+it all the way up the alley:
+
+"A man that would kill a passenger-ship would shoot a baby in its
+cradle. When you think how long it takes to build a ship, how much
+work she represents, how sweet she is when she rides out and all
+that--by Gosh! there's no word mean enough for the skoundrels. There's
+nothing they won't do now--absolutely nothing."
+
+She heard no more of him, and she did not see him again that night.
+She forgot him utterly. Even the little wince of distress he gave her
+by his provincialism was forgotten in the anguish her foster-parents
+caused her.
+
+For Marie Louise had a strange, an odious sensation that Sir Joseph
+and Lady Webling were not quite sincere in their expressions of horror
+and grief over the finished epic, the _Lusitania_. It was not for lack
+of language; they used the strongest words they could find. But there
+was missing the subtile somewhat of intonation and gesture that actors
+call sincerity. Marie Louise knew how hard it is even for a great
+actor to express his simplest thoughts with conviction. No, it was
+when he expressed them best that he was least convincing, since an
+emotion that can be adequately presented is not a very big emotion; at
+least it does not overwhelm the soul. Inadequacy, helplessness,
+gaucherie, prove that the feelings are bigger than the eloquence. They
+"get across the footlights" between each player on the human stage and
+his audience.
+
+Yes, that was it: Sir Joseph and Lady Webling were protesting too well
+and too much. Marie Louise hated herself for even the disloyalty of
+such a criticism of them, but she was repelled somehow by such
+rhetoric, and she liked far better the dour silence of old Mr.
+Verrinder. He looked a bishop who had got into a layman's evening
+dress by mistake. He was something very impressive and influential in
+the government, nobody knew just what.
+
+Marie Louise liked still better than Verrinder's silence the
+distracted muttering and stammering of a young English aviator, the
+Marquess of Strathdene, who was recuperating from wounds and was going
+up in the air rapidly on the Webling champagne. He was maltreating his
+bread and throwing in champagne with an apparent eagerness for the
+inevitable result. Before he grew quite too thick to be understood, he
+groaned to himself, but loudly enough to be heard the whole length and
+breadth of the table: "I remember readin' about old Greek witch name
+Circe--changed human beings into shape of swine. I wonder who turned
+those German swine into the shape of human beings."
+
+Marie Louise noted that Lady Webling was shocked--by the vulgarity, no
+doubt. "Swine" do not belong in dining-room language--only in the
+platters or the chairs. Marie Louise caught an angry look also in the
+eye of Nicholas Easton, though he, too, had been incisive in his
+comments on the theme of the dinner. His English had been uncannily
+correct, his phrases formal with the exactitude of a book on syntax or
+the dialogue of a gentleman in a novel. But he also was drinking too
+much, and as his lips fuddled he had trouble with a very formal
+"without which." It resulted first as "veetowit veech," then as
+"whidthout witch." He made it on the third trial.
+
+Marie Louise, turning her eyes his way in wonder, encountered two
+other glances moving in the same direction. Lady Webling looked
+anxious, alarmed. Mr. Verrinder's gaze was merely studious. Marie
+Louise felt an odd impression that Lady Webling was sending a kind of
+heliographic warning, while the look of Mr. Verrinder was like a
+search-light that studies and registers, then moves away.
+
+Marie Louise disliked Easton more and more, but Lady Webling kept
+recommending him with her solicitous manner toward him. She made
+several efforts, too, to shift the conversation from the _Lusitania_;
+but it swung always back. Much bewilderment was expressed because the
+ship was not protected by a convoy. Many wondered why she was where
+she was when she was struck, and how she came to take that course at
+all.
+
+Lady Clifton-Wyatt, who had several friends on board and was uncertain
+of their fate, was unusually fierce in blaming the government. She
+always blamed it for everything, when it was Liberal. And now she
+said:
+
+"It was nothing short of murder to have left the poor ship to steal in
+by herself without protection. Whatever was the Admiralty thinking of?
+If the Cabinet doesn't fall for this, we might as well give up."
+
+The Liberals present acknowledged her notorious prejudices with a sigh
+of resignation. But the Marquess of Strathdene rolled a foggy eye and
+a foggy tongue in answer:
+
+"Darlling llady, there must have been war-ships waitin' to convoy the
+_Lusitania_; but she didn't come to rendezvous because why? Because
+some filthy Zherman gave her a false wireless and led her into a
+trap."
+
+This amazing theory with its drunken inspiration of plausibility
+startled the whole throng. It set eyeballs rolling in all directions
+like a break in a game of pool. Everybody stared at Strathdene, then
+at somebody else. Marie Louise's racing gaze noted that Mr.
+Verrinder's eyes went slowly about again, studying everybody except
+Strathdene.
+
+Lady Clifton-Wyatt's eyes as they ran simply expressed a disgust that
+she put into words with her usual frankness:
+
+"Don't be more idiotic than necess'ry, my dear boy; there are secret
+codes, you know."
+
+"S-secret codes I know? Secret codes the Germans know--that's what you
+mean, sweetheart. I don't know one little secret, but Huns-- Do you
+know how many thousand Germans there are loose in England--do you?"
+
+Lady Clifton-Wyatt shook her head impatiently. "I haven't the faintest
+notion. Far more than I wish, I'm sure."
+
+"I hope so, unless you wish fifty thousand. And God knows how many
+more. And I'm not alluthing to Germans in disguise, naturalized
+Germans--quinine pills with a little coating. I'm not referring to
+you, of course, Sir Joseph. Greates' respect for you. Ever'body has.
+You have done all you could to overcome the fatal error of your
+parents. You're a splen'id gen'l'man. Your 'xception proves rule. Even
+Germans can't all be perf'ly rotten."
+
+"Thank you, Marquess, thank you," said Sir Joseph, with a natural
+embarrassment.
+
+Marie Louise noted the slight difference between the English "Thank
+you" and Sir Joseph's "Thang gyou."
+
+Then Lady Webling's eyes went around the table, catching up the
+women's eyes and forms, and she led them in a troop from the
+embarrassing scene. She brought the embarrassment with her to the
+drawing-room, where the women sat about smoking miserably and waiting
+for the men to come forth and take them home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+There must have been embarrassment enough left to go round the
+dining-table, too, for in an unusually brief while the men flocked
+into the drawing-room. And they began to plead engagements in offices
+or homes or Parliament.
+
+It was not yet ten o'clock when the last of the guests had gone,
+except Nicholas Easton. And Sir Joseph took him into his own study.
+Easton walked a trifle too solemnly straight, as if he had set himself
+an imaginary chalk-line to follow. He jostled against the door, and as
+he closed it, swung with it uncertainly.
+
+Lady Webling asked almost at once, with a nod of the head in the
+direction of the study door:
+
+"Well, my dear child, what do you think of Nicky?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. He's nice, but--"
+
+"We're very fond of him, Sir Joseph and I--and we do hope you will
+be."
+
+Marie Louise wondered if they were going to select a husband for her.
+It was a dreadful situation, because there was no compulsion except
+the compulsion of obligation. They never gave her a chance to do
+anything for them; they were always doing things for her. What an
+ingrate she would be to rebuff their first real desire! And yet to
+marry a man she felt such antipathy for--surely there could be some
+less hateful way of obliging her benefactors. She felt like a castaway
+on a desert, and there was something of the wilderness in the
+immensity of the drawing-room with its crowds of untenanted divans and
+of empty chairs drawn into groups as the departed guests had left
+them.
+
+Lady Webling stood close to Marie Louise and pressed for an answer.
+
+"You don't really dislike Nicky, do you?"
+
+"N-o-o. I've not known him long enough to dislike him very well."
+
+She tried to soften the rebuff with a laugh, but Lady Webling sighed
+profoundly and smothered her disappointment in a fond "Good night."
+She smothered the great child, too, in a hugely buxom embrace. When
+Marie emerged she was suddenly reminded that she had not yet spoken to
+Lady Webling of Fräulein Ernst's attack on the children's souls. She
+spoke now.
+
+"There's one thing, mamma, I've been wanting to tell you all evening.
+Please don't let it distress you, but really I'm afraid you'll have to
+get rid of Fräulein."
+
+Lady Webling's voluminous yawn was stricken midway into a gasp. Marie
+Louise told her the story of the diabolical prayer. Lady Webling took
+the blow without reeling. She expressed shock, but again expressed it
+too perfectly.
+
+She promised to "reprimand the foolish old soul."
+
+"To reprimand her!" Marie Louise cried. "You won't send her away?"
+
+"Send her away where, my child? Where should we send the poor thing?
+But I'll speak to her very sharply. It was outrageous of her. What if
+the children should say such things before other people? It would be
+frightful! Thank you for telling me, my dear. And now I'm for bed! And
+you should be. You look quite worn out. Coming up?"
+
+Lady Webling laughed and glanced at the study door, implying and
+rejoicing in the implication that Marie Louise was lingering for a
+last word with Easton.
+
+Really she was trying to avoid climbing the long stairs with Lady
+Webling's arm about her. For the first time in her life she distrusted
+the perfection of the old soul's motives. She felt like a Judas when
+Lady Webling offered her cheek for another good-night kiss. Then she
+pretended to read a book while she listened for Lady Webling's last
+puff as she made the top step.
+
+At once she poised for flight. But the study door opened and Easton
+came out. He was bending down to murmur into Sir Joseph's downcast
+countenance. Easton was saying, with a tremulous emotion, "This is the
+beginning of the end of England's control of the sea."
+
+Marie Louise almost felt that there was a quiver of eagerness rather
+than of dread in his tone, or that the dread was the awe of a horrible
+hope.
+
+Sir Joseph was brooding and shaking his head. He seemed to start as he
+saw Marie Louise. But he smiled on her dotingly and said:
+
+"You are not gone to bed yet?"
+
+She shook her head and sorrowed over him with a sudden rush of
+gratitude to his defense. She did not reward Easton's smile with any
+favor, though he widened his eyes in admiration.
+
+Sir Joseph said: "Good night, Nicky. It is long before I see you some
+more."
+
+Nicholas nodded. "But I shall see Miss Marie Louise quite soon now."
+
+This puzzled Marie Louise. She pondered it while Nicky bent and kissed
+her hand, heaved a guttural, gluttonous "Ah!" and went his way.
+
+It was nearly a week later before she had a clue to the riddle. Then
+Sir Joseph came home to luncheon unexpectedly. He had an envelope with
+him, sealed with great red buttons of wax. He asked Marie Louise into
+his office and said, with an almost stealthy importance:
+
+"My darling, I have a little favor to ask of you. Sometimes, you see,
+when I am having a big dealing on the Stock Exchange I do not like
+that everybody knows my business. Too many people wish to know all I
+do, so they can be doing the same. What everybody knows helps nobody.
+It is my wish to get this envelope to a man without somebody finding
+out something. Understand?"
+
+"Yes, papa!" Marie Louise answered with the utmost confidence that
+what he did was good and wise and straight. She experienced a qualm
+when Sir Joseph explained that Nicky was the man. She wondered why he
+did not come to the house. Then she rebuked herself for presuming to
+question Sir Joseph's motives. He had never been anything but good to
+her, and he had been so whole-heartedly good that for her to give
+thought-room to a suspicion of him was heinous.
+
+He had business secrets and stratagems of tremendous financial moment.
+She had known him to work up great drives on the market and to use all
+sorts of people to prepare his attacks. She did not understand big
+business methods. She regarded them all with childlike bewilderment.
+When, then, Sir Joseph asked her to meet Nicky, as if casually, in
+Regent's Park, and convey the envelope from her hand to Nicky's
+without any one's witnessing the transfer, she felt the elation of a
+child intrusted with an important errand. So she walked all the way to
+Regent's Park with the long strides of a young woman out for a
+constitutional. She found a bench where she was told to, and sat down
+to bask in the spring air, and wait.
+
+By and by Easton sauntered along, lifted his hat to Marie Louise, and
+made a great show of surprise. She rose and gave him her hand. She had
+taken the precaution to wear gloves--also she had the envelope in her
+hand. She left it in Nicky's. He smuggled it into his coat pocket, and
+murmuring, "So sorry I can't stop," lifted his hat and hurried off.
+
+Marie Louise sat down again and after a time resumed her constitutional.
+
+Sir Joseph was full of thanks when she saw him at night.
+
+Some days later he asked Marie Louise to meet Nicky outside a Bond
+Street shop. She was to have a small parcel and drop it. Nicky would
+stoop and pick it up and hand her in its stead another of similar
+wrapper. She was to thank him and come home.
+
+Another day Marie Louise received from Sir Joseph a letter and a
+request to take the children with her for a long walk, ending at the
+Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. The children carried their private
+navies with them and squatted at the brim of the huge basin, poking
+their reluctant yachts to sea. The boy Victor perfected a wonderful
+scheme for using a long stick as a submarine. He thrust his arm under
+water and from a distance knocked his sister's sailboat about till its
+canvas was afloat and it filled and sank. All the while he wore the
+most distant of expressions, but canny little Bettina soon realized
+who had caused this catastrophe and how, and she went for Victor of
+the U-stick with finger-nails and feet and nearly rounded him into the
+toy ocean. It evidently made a difference whose ship was gored.
+
+Marie Louise darted forward to save Victor from a ducking as well as a
+trouncing, and nearly ran over a man who was passing.
+
+It was Ross Davidge, whiling away an hour between appointments. He
+thought he recognized Marie Louise, but he was not sure. Women in the
+morning look so unlike their evening selves. He dared not speak.
+
+Davidge lingered around trying to get up the courage to speak, but
+Marie Louise was too distraught with the feud even to see him when she
+looked at him. She would not have known him, anyway.
+
+Davidge was confirmed in his guess at her identity by the appearance
+of the man he had seen at her side at the dinner. But the confirmation
+was Davidge's exile, for the fellow lifted his hat with a look of
+great surprise and said to Marie Louise, "Fancy finding you heah!"
+
+"Blah!" said Davidge to himself, and went on about his business.
+
+Marie Louise did not pretend surprise at seeing Easton, but went on
+scolding Victor and Bettina.
+
+"If any of these other boys catch you playing submarine they'll
+submarine you!"
+
+And she brought the proud Bettina to book with a, "You were so glad
+the _Lusitania_ was sunk, you see now how it feels!"
+
+She felt the puerile incongruity of the rebuke, but it sufficed to
+send Bettina into a cyclone of grief. She was already one of those
+who are infinitely indifferent to the sufferings of others and
+infinitesimally sensitive to their own.
+
+When Nicky heard the story he gave Marie Louise a curious look of
+disapproval and took Bettina into his lap. She was also already one of
+those ladies who find a man's lap an excellent consolation. He got rid
+of her adroitly and when she and Victor were once more engaged in
+navigation Nicky took up the business he had come for.
+
+"May I stop a moment?" he said, and sat down.
+
+"I have a letter for you," said Marie Louise.
+
+His roving eyes showed him that the coast was clear, and he slipped a
+letter into her hand-bag which she opened, and from it he took the
+letter she cautiously disclosed. He chatted awhile and moved away.
+
+This sort of meeting took place several times in several places. When
+the crowds were too great or a bobby loitered about, Nicky would
+murmur to Marie Louise that she had better start home. He would take
+her arm familiarly and the transfer of the parcel would be deftly
+achieved.
+
+This messenger service went on for several weeks. Sir Joseph
+apologized for the trouble he gave Marie Louise. He seemed to be
+sincerely unhappy about it, and his little eyes in their fat, watery
+bags peered at her with a tender regret and an ulterior regret as
+well.
+
+He explained a dozen times that he sent her because it was such an
+important business and he had no one else to trust. And Marie Louise,
+for all her anxiety, was sadly glad of his confidence, regarded it as
+sacred, and would not violate it so much as to make the least effort
+to learn what messages she was carrying. Nothing, of course, would
+have been easier than to pry open one of these envelopes. Sometimes
+the lapel was hardly sealed. But she would as soon have peeked into a
+bathroom.
+
+Late in June the Weblings left town and settled in the great country
+seat Sir Joseph had bought from a bankrupt American who had bought it
+from nobility gone back to humility. Here life was life. There were
+forests and surreptitious pheasants, deer that would almost but never
+quite come to call, unseen nightingales that sang from lofty nave and
+transept like cherubim all wings and voice.
+
+The house was usually full of guests, but they were careful not to
+intrude upon their hosts nor their hosts upon them. The life was like
+life at a big hotel. There was always a little gambling to be had,
+tennis, golf, or music, or a quiet chat, gardens to stroll and sniff
+or grub in, horses to ride, motors at beck and call, solitude or
+company.
+
+Lady Clifton-Wyatt came down for a week-end and struck up a great
+friendship with the majestic Mrs. Prothero from Washington, D. C., so
+grand a lady that even Lady C.-W. was a bit in awe of her, so gracious
+a personage that even Lady C.-W. could not pick a quarrel with her.
+
+Mrs. Prothero gathered Marie Louise under her wing and urged her to
+visit her when she came to America. But Polly Widdicombe had already
+pledged Marie Louise to make her home her own on that side of the sea.
+Polly came down, too, and had "the time of her young life" in doing a
+bit of the women's war work that became the beautiful fashion of the
+time. The justification of it was that it released men for the
+trenches, but Polly insisted that it was shamefully good sport.
+
+She and Marie Louise went about in breeches and shirts and worked like
+hostlers around the stables and in the paddocks, breaking colts and
+mucking out stalls. They donned the blouses and boots of peasants, and
+worked in the fields with rake and hoe and harrow. They even tried the
+plow, but they followed it too literally, and the scallopy furrows
+they drew across the fields made the yokels laugh or grieve, according
+to their natures.
+
+The photographers were alive to the piquancy of these revelations, and
+portraits of Marie Louise in knickers and puttees, and armed with
+agricultural weapons, appeared in the pages of all the weeklies along
+with other aristocrats and commoners. Some of these even reached
+America.
+
+There was just one flaw for Rosalind in this "As You Like It" life and
+that was the persistence of the secret association with Nicky. It was
+the strangest of clandestine affairs.
+
+Marie Louise had always liked to get out alone in a saddle or behind
+the wheel of a runabout, and Sir Joseph, when he came up from town,
+fell into the habit of asking her once in a while to take another
+little note to Nicky.
+
+She found him in out-of-the-way places. He would step from a clump of
+bushes by the road and hail her car, or she would overtake him and
+offer him a lift to his inn, or she would take horse and gallop across
+country and find him awaiting her in some lonely avenue or in the
+twist of a ravine.
+
+He was usually so preoccupied and furtive that he made no proffer of
+courtship; but once when he seemed peculiarly triumphant he rode so
+close to her that their knees girded and their spurs clashed, and he
+tried to clip her in his arms. She gathered her horse and let him go,
+and he plunged ahead so abruptly that the clinging Nicky dragged Marie
+Louise from her saddle backward. He tried to swing her to the pommel
+of his own, but she fought herself free and came to the ground and was
+almost trampled. She was so rumpled and so furious, and he so
+frightened, that he left her and spurred after her horse, brought him
+back, and bothered her no more that day.
+
+"If you ever annoy me again," she said, "it'll be the last you'll see
+of me."
+
+She was too useful to be treated as a mere beauty, and she had him
+cowed.
+
+It was inevitable that Marie Louise, being silently urged to love
+Nicky, should helplessly resist the various appeals in his behalf.
+
+There is no worse enemy to love than recommendation. There is
+something froward about the passion. It hangs back like a fretful
+child, loathing what is held out for its temptation, longing for the
+forbidden, the sharp, the perilous.
+
+Next to being asked to love, trying to love is the gravest impediment.
+Marie Louise kept telling herself that she ought to marry Nicky, and
+herself kept refusing to obey.
+
+From very perversity her heart turned to other interests. She was
+desperately in love with soldiers _en masse_ and individually. There
+was safety in numbers and a canceling rivalry between those who were
+going out perhaps to death and those who had come back from the jaws
+of death variously the worse for the experience.
+
+The blind would have been irresistible in their groping need of
+comfort, if there had not been the maimed of body or mind putting out
+their incessant pleas for a gramercy of love. Those whose wounds were
+hideous took on an uncanny beauty from their sacrifice.
+
+She busied herself about them and suffered ecstasies of pity.
+
+She wanted to go to France and get near to danger, to help the freshly
+wounded, to stanch the spouting arteries, to lend courage to the souls
+dismayed by the first horror of the understanding that thenceforth
+they must go through life piecemeal.
+
+But whenever she made application she met some vague rebuff. Her
+appeals were passed on and on and the blame for their failure was
+referred always to some remote personage impossible to reach.
+
+Eventually it dawned on her that there was actually an official
+intention to keep her out of France. This stupefied her for a time.
+One day it came over her that she was herself suspect. This seemed
+ridiculous beyond words in view of her abhorrence of the German cause
+in large and in detail. Ransacking her soul for an explanation, she
+ran upon the idea that it was because of her association with the
+Weblings.
+
+She was ashamed to have given such a thought passage through her mind.
+But it came back as often as she drove it out and then the thought
+began to hover about her that perhaps the suspicion was not so insane
+as she believed. The public is generally unreasonable, but its
+intuitions, like a woman's, are the resultants of such complex
+instincts that they are above analysis.
+
+But the note-carrying went on, and she could not escape from the
+suspicion or its shadow of disgrace. Like a hateful buzzard it was
+always somewhere in her sky.
+
+Once the suspicion had domiciled itself in her world, it was
+incessantly confirmed by the minutiæ of every-day existence. The
+interchange of messages with Nicky Easton grew unexplainable on any
+other ground. The theory of secret financial dealings looked
+ludicrous; or if the dealings were financial, they must be some of the
+trading with the enemy that was so much discussed in the papers.
+
+She felt that she had been conniving in one of the spy-plots that all
+the Empire was talking about. She grew afraid to the last degree of
+fear. She saw herself on the scaffold. She resolved to carry no more
+messages.
+
+But the next request of Sir Joseph's found her complying automatically.
+It had come to be her habit to do what he asked her to do, and to take
+pride in the service as a small installment on her infinite debt. And
+every time her resentment rose to an overboiling point, Sir Joseph or
+Lady Webling would show her some exquisite kindness or do some great
+public service that won commendation from on high.
+
+One day when she was keyed up to protest Lady Webling discharged
+Fräulein Ernst for her pro-Germanism and engaged an English nurse.
+Another day Lady Webling asked her to go on a visit to a hospital.
+There she lavished tenderness on the British wounded and ignored the
+German. How could Marie Louise suspect her of being anti-British?
+Another time when Marie Louise was almost ready to rebel she saw Sir
+Joseph's name heading a war subscription, and that night he made, at a
+public meeting, a speech denouncing Germany in terms of vitriol.
+
+After all, Marie Louise was not English. And America was still
+neutral. The President had wrung from Germany a promise of better
+behavior, and in a sneaking way the promise was kept, with many a
+violation quickly apologized for.
+
+Still, England wrestled for her life. There seemed to be hardly room
+in the papers for the mere names of the dead and the wounded, and
+those still more pitiable ones, the missing.
+
+Marie Louise lost many a friend, and all of her friends lost and lost.
+She wore herself out in suffering for others, in visiting the sick,
+the forlorn, the anxious, the newly bereaved.
+
+The strain on Marie Louise's heart was the more exhausting because she
+had a craven feeling all the while that perhaps she was being used
+somehow as a tool for the destruction of English plans and men. She
+tried to get the courage to open one of those messages, but she was
+afraid that she might find confirmation. She made up her mind again
+and again to put the question point-blank to Sir Joseph, but her
+tongue faltered. If he were guilty, he would deny it; if he were
+innocent, the accusation would break his heart. She hated Nicky too
+much to ask him. He would lie in any case.
+
+She was nagged incessantly by a gadfly of conscience that buzzed in
+her ears the counsel to tell the police. Sometimes on her way to a
+tryst with Easton a spirit in her feet led her toward a police
+station, but another spirit carried her past, for she would visualize
+the sure consequences of such an exposure. If her suspicions were
+false, she would be exposed as a combination of dastard and dolt. If
+they were true, she would be sending Sir Joseph and Lady Webling
+perhaps to the gallows.
+
+To betray those who had been so angelic to her was simply unthinkable.
+
+Irresolution and meditation made her a very Hamlet of postponement and
+inaction. Hamlet had only a ghost for counselor, and a mother to be
+the first victim of his rashness. No wonder he hesitated. And Marie
+Louise had only hysterical suspicion to account for her thoughts; and
+the victims of her first step would be the only father and mother she
+had ever really known. America itself was another Hamlet of debate and
+indecision, weighing evidences, pondering theories, deferring the
+sword, hoping that Germany would throw away the baser half. And all
+the while time slid away, lives slid away, nations fell.
+
+In the autumn the town house was opened again. There was much thinly
+veiled indignation in the papers and in the circulation of gossip
+because of Sir Joseph's prominence in English life. The Germans were
+so relentless and so various in their outrages upon even the cruel
+usages of combat that the sound of a German name grew almost
+unbearable. People were calling for Sir Joseph's arrest. Others
+scoffed at the cruelty and cowardice of such hysteria.
+
+A once-loved prince of German blood had been frozen out of the navy,
+and the internment camps were growing like boom towns. Yet other
+Germans somehow were granted an almost untrammeled freedom, and
+thousands who had avoided evil activity were tolerated throughout the
+war.
+
+Sir Joseph kept retorting to suspicion with subscription. He took
+enormous quantities of the government loans. His contributions to the
+Red Cross and the multitudinous charities were more like endowments
+than gifts. How could Marie Louise be vile enough to suspect him?
+
+Yet in spite of herself she resolved at last to refuse further
+messenger service. Then she learned that Nicky had left England and
+gone to America on most important financial business of a most
+confidential nature.
+
+Marie Louise was too glad of her release to ask questions. She
+rejoiced that she had not insulted her foster-parents with mutiny, and
+she drudged at whatever war work the committees found for her. They
+found nothing very picturesque, but the more toilsome her labor was
+the more it served for absolution of any evil she might have done.
+
+And now that the dilemma of loyalty was taken from her soul, her body
+surrendered weakly. She had time to fall ill. It was enough that she
+got her feet wet. Her convalescence was slow even in the high hills of
+Matlock.
+
+The winter had passed, and the summer of 1916 had come before Marie
+Louise was herself. The Weblings had moved out to the country again;
+the flowers were back in the gardens; the deer and the birds were in
+their summer garb and mood. But now the house guests were all wounded
+soldiers and nurses. Sir Joseph had turned over his estate for a war
+hospital.
+
+Lady Webling went among her visitors like a queen making her rounds.
+Sir Joseph squandered money on his distinguished company. Marie Louise
+joined them and took what comfort she could in such diminution of pain
+and such contributions of war power as were permitted her. Those were
+the only legitimate happinesses in the world.
+
+The tennis-courts were peopled now with players glad of one arm or one
+eye or even a demodeled face. On the golf-links crutched men hobbled.
+The horses in the stables bore only partial riders. The card-parties
+were squared by players using hands made by hand. The music-room
+resounded with five-finger improvisations and with vocalists who had
+little but their voices left. They howled, "Keep your head down,
+Fritzie boy," or, "We gave them hell at Neuve Chapelle, and here we
+are and here we are again," or moaned love-songs with a sardonic
+irony.
+
+And the guests at tea! And the guests who could not come to tea!
+
+Young Hawdon was there. "Well, Marie Louise," he had said, "I'm back
+from France, but not _in toto_. Fact is, I'm neither here nor there.
+Quite a sketchy party you have. But we'll charge it all to Germany,
+and some day we'll collect. Some day! Some day!" And he burst into
+song.
+
+The wonder was that there was so much bravery. At times there was
+hilarity, but it was always close to tears.
+
+The Weblings went back to London early and took Marie Louise with
+them. She wanted to stay with the poor soldiers, but Sir Joseph said
+that there was just as much for her to do in town. There was no lack
+of poor soldiers anywhere. Besides, he needed her, he said. This set
+her heart to plunging with the old fear. But he was querulous and
+irascible nowadays, and Lady Webling begged her not to excite him, for
+she was afraid of a paralysis. He had the look of a Damocles living
+under the sword.
+
+The news from America was more encouraging to England and to the
+Americans in England. German spies were being arrested with amazing
+frequence. Ambassadors were floundering in hot water and setting up a
+large traffic in return-tickets. Even the trunks of certain
+"Americans" were searched--men and women who were amazed to learn that
+curious German documents had got mixed up in their own effects. Some
+most peculiar checks and receipts turned up.
+
+It was shortly after a cloudy account of one of these trunk-raids had
+been published in the London papers that Sir Joseph had his first
+stroke of paralysis.
+
+Sir Joseph was in pitiful case. His devotion to Marie Louise was
+heartbreaking. Her sympathy had not been exhausted, but schooled
+rather by its prolonged exercise, and she gave the forlorn old wretch
+a love and a tenderness that had been wrought to a fine art without
+losing any of its spontaneous reality.
+
+At first he could move only a bit of the great bulk, sprawled like a
+snowdrift under the sheet. He was helpless as a shattered soldier, but
+slowly he won back his faculties and his members. The doors that were
+shut between his brain and his powers opened one by one, and he became
+a man again.
+
+The first thing he wrote with his rediscovered right hand was his
+signature to a document his lawyer brought him after a consultation.
+It was a transfer of twenty thousand pounds in British war bonds, "for
+services rendered and other valuable considerations," to his dear
+daughter Marie Louise Webling.
+
+When the warrant was handed to her with the bundle of securities,
+Marie Louise was puzzled, then shocked as the old man explained with
+his still uncertain lips. When she understood, she rejected the gift
+with horror. Sir Joseph pleaded with her in a thick speech that had
+relapsed to an earlier habit.
+
+"I am theenkink how close I been by dyink. Du bist--zhoo are in my
+vwill, of coorse, but a man says, 'I vwill,' and some heirs says, 'You
+vwon't yet!' Better I should make sure of somethink."
+
+"But I don't want money, papa--not like this. And I won't have you
+speak of wills and such odious things."
+
+"You have been like our own daughter only more obeyink as poor Hedwig.
+You should not make me sick by to refuse."
+
+She could only quiet him by accepting the wealth and bringing him the
+receipt for its deposit in a safe of her own.
+
+When he was once more able to hoist his massive body to its feet and
+to walk to his own door, he said:
+
+"_Mein_--my _Gott_! Look at the calendar once. It is nineteen
+seventeen already."
+
+He ceased to be that simple, primitive thing, a sick man; he became
+again the financier. She heard of him anew on war-industry boards. She
+saw his name on lists of big subscriptions. He began to talk anew of
+Nicky, and he spoke with unusual anxiety of U-boats. He hoped that
+they would have a bad week. There was no questioning his sincerity in
+this.
+
+And one evening he came home in a womanish flurry. He pinched the ear
+of Marie Louise and whispered to her:
+
+"Nicky is here in England--safe after the sea voyage. Be a nize girl,
+and you shall see him soon now."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+The next morning Marie Louise, waking, found her windows opaque with
+fog. The gardens she usually looked over, glistening green all winter
+through, were gone, and in their place was a vast bale of sooty cotton
+packed so tight against the glass that her eyes could not pierce to
+the sill.
+
+Marie Louise went down to breakfast in a room like a smoky tunnel
+where the lights burned sickly. She was in a murky and suffocating
+humor, but Sir Joseph was strangely content for the hour and the air.
+He ate with the zest of a boy on a holi-morn, and beckoned her into
+his study, where he confided to her great news:
+
+"Nicky telephoned me. He brings wonderful news out of America. Big
+business he has done. He cannot come yet by our house, for even
+servants must not see him here. So you shall go and meet him. You take
+your own little car, and go most careful till you find Hyde Park gate.
+Inside you stop and get out to see if something is matter with the
+engine. A man is there--Nicky. He steps in the car. You get in and
+drive slowly--so slowly. Give him this letter--put in bosom of dress
+not to lose. He tells you maybe something, and he gives you envelope.
+Then he gets out, and you come home--but carefully. Don't let one of
+those buses run you over in the fog. I should not risk you if not most
+important."
+
+Marie Louise pleaded illness, and fear of never finding the place. But
+Sir Joseph stared at her with such wonder and pain that she yielded
+hastily, took the envelope, folded it small, thrust it into her chest
+pocket and went out to the garage, where she could hardly bully the
+chauffeur into letting her take her own car. He put all the curtains
+on, and she pushed forth into obfuscation like a one-man submarine.
+There was something of the effect of moving along the floor of the
+sea. The air was translucent, a little like water-depths, but
+everything was a blur.
+
+Luck was with her. She neither ran over nor was run over. But she was
+so tardy in finding the gate, and Nicky was so damp, so chilled, and
+so uneasy with the apparitions and the voices that had haunted him in
+the fog that he said nothing more cordial than:
+
+"At last! So you come!"
+
+He climbed in, shivering with cold or fear. And she ran the car a
+little farther into the nebulous depths. She gave him the letter from
+Sir Joseph and took from him another.
+
+Nicky did not care to tarry.
+
+"I should get back to my house with this devil's cold I've caught," he
+said. "Do you still have no sun in this bedamned England?"
+
+The "you" struck Marie Louise as odd coming from a professed
+Englishman, even if he did lay the blame for his accent on years spent
+in German banking-houses.
+
+"How did you find the United States?" Marie Louise asked, with a
+sudden qualm of homesickness.
+
+"Those United States! Ha! United about what? Money!"
+
+"I think you can get along better afoot," said Marie Louise, as she
+made a turn and slipped through the pillars of the gate.
+
+"_Au revoir!_" said Nicky, and he dived out, slamming the door back of
+him.
+
+That night there was one of Sir Joseph's dinners. But almost nobody
+came, except Lieutenant Hawdon and old Mr. Verrinder. Sir Joseph and
+Lady Webling seemed more frightened than insulted by the last-moment
+regrets of the guests. Was it an omen?
+
+It was not many days before Sir Joseph asked Marie Louise to carry
+another envelope to Nicky. She went out alone, shuddering in the wet
+and edged air. She found the bench agreed on, and sat waiting, craven
+and mutinous. Nicky did not come, but another man passed her, looked
+searchingly, turned and came back to murmur under his lifted hat:
+
+"Miss Webling?"
+
+She gave him her stingiest "Yis."
+
+"Mr. Easton asked me to meet you in his place, and explain."
+
+"He is not coming?"
+
+"He can't. He is ill. A bad cold only. He has a letter for you. Have
+you one for him?"
+
+Marie Louise liked this man even less than she would have liked Nicky
+himself. She was alarmed, and showed it. The stranger said:
+
+"I am Mr. von Gröner, a frient of--of Nicky's."
+
+Marie Louise vibrated between shame and terror. But von Gröner's
+credentials were good; it was surely Nicky's hand that had penned the
+lines on the envelope. She took it reluctantly and gave him the letter
+she carried.
+
+She hastened home. Sir Joseph was in a sad flurry, but he accepted the
+testimony of Nicky's autograph.
+
+The next day Marie Louise must go on another errand. This time her
+envelope bore the name of Nicky and the added line, "_Kindness of Mr.
+von Gröner._"
+
+Von Gröner tried to question Marie Louise, but her wits were in an
+absolute maelstrom of terror. She was afraid of him, afraid that
+he represented Nicky, afraid that he did not, afraid that he was a
+real German, afraid that he was a pretended spy, or an English
+secret-service man. She was afraid of Sir Joseph and his wife, afraid
+to obey them or disobey them, to love them or hate them, betray them
+or be betrayed. She had lost all sense of direction, of impetus,
+of desire.
+
+She saw that Sir Joseph and Lady Webling were in a state of panic,
+too. They smiled at her with a wan pity and fear. She caught them
+whispering often. She saw them cling together with a devotion that
+would have been a burlesque in a picture seen by strangers. It would
+have been almost as grotesque as a view of a hippopotamus and his mate
+cowering hugely together and nuzzling each other under the menace of a
+lightning-storm.
+
+Marie Louise came upon them once comparing the envelope she had just
+brought with other letters of Nicky's. Sir Joseph slipped them into a
+book, then took one of them out cautiously and showed it to Marie
+Louise.
+
+"Does that look really like the writing from Nicky?"
+
+"Yes," she said, then, "No," then, "Of course," then, "I don't know."
+
+Lady Webling said, "Sit down once, my child, and tell me just how this
+man von Gröner does, acts, speaks."
+
+She told them. They quizzed her. She was afraid that they would take
+her into their confidence, but they exchanged querying looks and
+signaled caution.
+
+Sir Joseph said: "Strange how long Nicky stays sick, and his
+memory--little things he mixes up. I wonder is he dead yet. Who
+knows?"
+
+"Dead?" Marie Louise cried. "Dead, and sends you letters?"
+
+"Yes, but such a funny letter this last one is. I think I write him
+once more and ask him is he dead or crazy, maybe. Anyway, I think I
+don't feel so very good now--mamma and I take maybe a little journey.
+You come along with, yes?"
+
+A rush of desperate gratitude to the only real people in her world led
+her to say:
+
+"Whatever you want me to do is what I want to do--or wherever to go."
+
+Lady Webling drew her to her breast, and Sir Joseph held her hand in
+one of his and patted it with the flabby other, mumbling:
+
+"Yes, but what is it we want you to do?"
+
+From his eyes came a scurry of tears that ran in panic among the folds
+of his cheeks. He shook them off and smiled, nodding and still patting
+her hand as he said:
+
+"Better I write one letter more for Mr. von Gröner. I esk him to come
+himself after dark to-night now."
+
+Marie Louise waited in her room, watching the sunlight die out of the
+west. She felt somehow as if she were a prisoner in the Tower, a
+princess waiting for the morrow's little visit to the scaffold. Or did
+the English shoot women, as Edith Cavell had been shot?
+
+There was a knock at the door, but it was not the turnkey. It was the
+butler to murmur, "Dinner, please." She went down and joined mamma and
+papa at the table. There were no guests except Terror and Suspense,
+and both of them wore smiling masks and made no visible sign of their
+presence.
+
+After dinner Marie Louise had her car brought round to the door. There
+was nothing surprising about that. Women had given up the ancient
+pretense that their respectability was something that must be policed
+by a male relative or squire except in broad daylight. Neither vice
+nor malaria was believed any longer to come from exposure to the night
+air; nor was virtue regarded like a sum of money that must not be
+risked by being carried about alone after dark. It had been easy
+enough to lose under the old régime.
+
+So Marie Louise launched out in her car much as a son of the family
+might have done. She drove to a little square too dingily middle class
+to require a policeman. She sounded her horn three squawks and swung
+open the door, and a man waiting under an appointed tree stepped from
+its shadow and into the shadow of the car before it stopped. She
+dropped into high speed and whisked out of the square.
+
+"You have for me a message," said Mr. von Gröner.
+
+"Yes. Sir Joseph wants to see you."
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Yes--at the house. We'll go there at once if you please."
+
+"Certainly. Delighted. But Nicky--I ought to telephone him I shall be
+gone."
+
+"Nicky is well enough to telephone?"
+
+"Not to come to the telephone, but there is a servant. If you will
+please stop somewhere. I shall be a moment only."
+
+Marie Louise felt that she ought not to stop, but she could hardly
+kidnap the man. So she drew up at a shop and von Gröner left her, her
+heart shaking her with a faint tremor like that of the engine of her
+car.
+
+Von Gröner returned promptly, but he said: "I think we should not go
+too straight to your father's house. Might be we are followed. We can
+tell soon. Go in the park, please, and suddenly stop, turn round, and
+I look at what cars follow."
+
+She let him command her. She was letting everybody command her; she
+had no destination, no North Star in her life. Von Gröner kept her
+dodging about Regent's Park till she grew angry.
+
+"This seems rather silly, doesn't it? I am going home. Sir Joseph has
+worries enough without--"
+
+"Ah, he has worries?"
+
+She did not answer. The eagerness in his voice did not please her. He
+kept up a rain of questions, too, but she answered them all by
+referring him to Sir Joseph.
+
+At last they reached the house. As they got out, two men closed in on
+the car and peered into their faces. Von Gröner snapped at them, and
+they fell back.
+
+Marie Louise had taken along her latchkey. She opened the door herself
+and led von Gröner to Sir Joseph's room.
+
+As she lifted her hand to knock she heard Lady Webling weeping
+frantically, crying out something incoherent. Marie Louise fell back
+and motioned von Gröner away, but he pushed the door open and, taking
+her by the elbow, thrust her forward.
+
+Lady Webling stopped short with a wail. Sir Joseph, who had been
+trying to quiet her by patting her hand, paused with his palm
+uplifted.
+
+Before Marie Louise could speak she saw that the old couple was not
+alone. By the mantel stood Mr. Verrinder. By the door, almost touching
+Marie Louise, was a tall, grim person she had not seen. He closed the
+door behind von Gröner and Marie Louise.
+
+Mr. Verrinder said, "Be good enough to sit down." To von Gröner he
+said, "How are you, Bickford?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Sir Joseph was staring at the new-comer, and his German nativity told
+him what Marie Louise had not been sure of, that von Gröner was no
+German. When Verrinder gave him an English name it shook Marie Louise
+with a new dismay. Sir Joseph turned from the man to Marie Louise and
+demanded:
+
+"Marie Louise, you ditt not theenk this man is a Cherman?"
+
+This one more shame crushed Marie Louise. She dropped into a chair,
+appealing feebly to the man she had retrieved:
+
+"Your name is not von Gröner?"
+
+Bickford grinned. "Well, in a manner of speakin'. You might say it's
+my pen-name. Not that I've ever been in the pen--except with Nicky."
+
+"Nicky is in the-- He's not ill?"
+
+"Well, he's a bit sick. He was a bit seasick to start with, and when
+we gave him the collar--well, he doesn't like his room."
+
+"But his letters--" Marie Louise pleaded, her fears racing ahead of
+her questions.
+
+"I was always a hand at forgery, but I thought best to turn it to the
+aid of me country. I'm proud if you liked me work. The last ones were
+not up to the mark. _I_ was hurried, and Nicky was ugly. He refused to
+answer any more questions. I had to do it all on me own. Ahfterwards I
+found I had made a few mistakes."
+
+When Marie Louise realized that this man had been calmly taking the
+letters addressed to Nicky and answering them in his feigned script to
+elicit further information from Sir Joseph and enmesh him further, she
+dropped her hands at her sides, feeling not only convicted of crime,
+but of imbecility as well.
+
+Sir Joseph and Lady Webling spread their hands and drew up their
+shoulders in surrender and gave up hope of bluff.
+
+Verrinder wanted to be merciful and avoid any more climaxes.
+
+"You see it's all up, Sir Joseph, don't you?" he said.
+
+Sir Joseph drew himself again as high as he could, though the burden
+of his flesh kept pulling him down. He did not answer.
+
+"Come now, Sir Joseph, be a sport."
+
+"The Englishman's releechion," sneered Sir Joseph, "to be ein
+_Sportmann_."
+
+"Oh, I know you can't understand it," said Verrinder. "It seems to be
+untranslatable into German--just as we can't seem to understand
+_Germanity_ except that it is the antonym of _humanity_. You fellows
+have no boyhood literature, I am told, no Henty or Hughes or Scott to
+fill you with ideas of fair play. You have no games to teach you. One
+really can't blame you for being such rotters, any more than one can
+blame a Kaffir for not understanding cricket.
+
+"But sport aside, use your intelligence, old man. _I_'ve laid my cards
+on the table--enough of them, at least. We've trumped every trick, and
+we've all the trumps outstanding. You have a few high cards up your
+sleeve. Why not toss them on the table and throw yourselves on the
+mercy of his Majesty?"
+
+The presence of Marie Louise drove the old couple to a last battle for
+her faith. Lady Webling stormed, "All what you accuse us is lies,
+lies!"
+
+Verrinder grew stern:
+
+"Lies, you say? We have you, and your daughter--also Nicky. We
+have--well, I'll not annoy you with their names. Over in the States
+they have a lot more of you fellows.
+
+"You and Sir Joseph have lived in this country for years and years.
+You have grown fat--I mean to say rich--upon our bounty. We have loved
+and trusted you. His Majesty has given you both marks of his most
+gracious favor."
+
+"We paid well for that," sneered Lady Webling.
+
+"Yes, I fancy you did--but with English pounds and pence that you
+gained with the help of British wits and British freedom. You have
+contributed to charities, yes, and handsomely, too, but not entirely
+without the sweet usages of advertisement. You have not hidden that
+part of your bookkeeping from the public.
+
+"But the rest of your books--you don't show those. We know a ghastly
+lot about them, and it is not pretty, my dear lady. I had hoped you
+would not force us to publish those transactions. You have plotted the
+destruction of the British Empire; you have conspired to destroy ships
+in dock and at sea; you have sent God knows how many lads to their
+death--and women and children, too. You have helped to blow up
+munitions-plants, and on your white heads is the blood of many and
+many a poor wretch torn to pieces at his lathe. You have made widows
+of women and orphans of children who never heard of you, nor you of
+them. Nor have you cared--or dared--to inquire.
+
+"Sir Joseph has been perfecting a great scheme to buy up what
+munitions-plants he could in this country in order to commit sabotage
+and slow up the production of the ammunition our troops are crying
+for. He has plotted with others to send defective shells that will rip
+up the guns they do not fit, and powders that will explode too soon or
+not at all. God! to think that the lives of our brave men and the life
+of our Empire should be threatened by such people as you!
+
+"And in the American field Sir Joseph has connived with a syndicate to
+purchase factories, to stop production at the source, since your
+U-boats and your red-handed diplomatic spies cannot stop it otherwise.
+Your agents have corrupted a few of the Yankees, and killed others,
+and would have killed more if the name of your people had not become
+such a horror even in that land where millions of Germans live that
+every proffer is suspect.
+
+"You see, we know you, Lady Webling and Sir Joseph. We have watched
+you all the while from the very first, and we know that you are not
+innocent even of complicity in the supreme infamy of luring the
+_Lusitania_ to her death."
+
+He was quivering with the rush of his emotions over the broken dam of
+habitual reticence.
+
+Lady Webling and Sir Joseph had quivered, too, less under the impact
+of his denunciation than in the confusion of their own exposure to
+themselves and to Marie Louise.
+
+They had watched her eyes as she heard Mr. Verrinder's philippic. They
+had seen her pass from incredulity to belief. They had seen her glance
+at them and glance away in fear of them.
+
+This broke them utterly, for she was utterly dear to them. She was
+dearer than their own flesh and blood. She had replaced their dead.
+She had been born to them without pain, without infancy, born full
+grown in the prime of youth and beauty. They had watched her love grow
+to a passion, and their own had grown with it.
+
+What would she do now? She was the judge they feared above England.
+They awaited her sentence.
+
+Her eyes wandered to them and searched them through. At first, under
+the spell of Verrinder's denunciation, she saw them as two bloated
+fiends, their hands dripping blood, their lips framed to lies, their
+brains to cunning and that synonym for Germanism, _ruthlessness_--the
+word the Germans chose, as their Kaiser chose Huns for an ideal.
+
+But she looked again. She saw the pleading in their eyes. Their very
+uncomeliness besought her mercy. After all, she had seen none of the
+things Verrinder described. The only real things to her, the only
+things she knew of her own knowledge, were the goodnesses of these
+two. They were her parents. And now for the first time they needed
+her. The mortgage their generosity had imposed on her had fallen due.
+
+How could she at the first unsupported obloquy of a stranger turn
+against them? Her first loyalty was due to them, and no other loyalty
+was under test. Something swept her to her feet. She ran to them and,
+as far as she could, gathered them into her arms. They wept like two
+children whom reproaches have hardened into defiance, but whom
+kindness has melted.
+
+Verrinder watched the spectacle with some surprise and not altogether
+with scorn. Whatever else Miss Webling was, she was a good sport. She
+stuck to her team in defeat.
+
+He said, not quite harshly, "So, Miss Webling, you cast your lot with
+them."
+
+"I do."
+
+"Do you believe that what I said was true?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Really, you should be careful. Those messages you carried incriminate
+you."
+
+"I suppose they do, though I never knew what was in them. No, I'll
+take that back. I'm not trying to crawl out of it."
+
+"Then since you confess so much, I shall have to ask you to come with
+them."
+
+"To the--the Tower of London?"
+
+"The car is ready."
+
+Marie Louise was stabbed with fright. She seized the doomed twain in a
+faster embrace.
+
+"What are you going to do with these poor souls?"
+
+"Their souls my dear Miss Webling, are outside our jurisdiction."
+
+"With their poor bodies, then?"
+
+"I am not a judge or a jury, Miss Webling. Everything will be done
+with propriety. They will not be torpedoed in midocean without
+warning. They will have the full advantage of the British law to the
+last."
+
+That awful word jarred them all. But Sir Joseph was determined to make
+a good end. He drew himself up with another effort.
+
+"Excuse, pleass, Mr. Verrinder--might it be we should take with us a
+few little things?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Thang gyou." He bowed and turned to go, taking his wife and Marie
+Louise by the arm, for mutual support.
+
+"If you don't mind, I'll come along," said Mr. Verrinder.
+
+Sir Joseph nodded. The three went heavily up the grandiose stairway as
+if a gibbet waited at the top. They went into Sir Joseph's room, which
+adjoined that of his wife. Mr. Verrinder paused on the sill somewhat
+shyly:
+
+"This is a most unpleasant task, but--"
+
+Marie Louise hesitated, smiling gruesomely.
+
+"My room is across the hall. You can hardly be in both places at once,
+can you?"
+
+"I fancy I can trust you--especially as the house is surrounded. If
+you don't mind joining us later."
+
+Marie Louise went to her room. Her maid was there in a palsy of fear.
+The servants had not dared apply themselves to the keyholes, but they
+knew that the master was visited by the police and that a cordon was
+drawn about the house.
+
+The ashen girl offered her help to Marie Louise, wondering if she
+would compromise herself with the law, but incapable of deserting so
+good a mistress even at such a crisis. Marie Louise thanked her and
+told her to go to bed, compelled her to leave. Then she set about the
+dreary task of selecting a few necessaries--a nightgown, an extra day
+gown, some linen, some silver, and a few brushes. She felt as if she
+were laying out her own grave-clothes, and that she would need little
+and not need that little long.
+
+She threw a good-by look, a long, sweeping, caressing glance, about
+her castle, and went across the hall, lugging her hand-bag. Before she
+entered Sir Joseph's room she knocked.
+
+It was Mr. Verrinder that answered, "Come in."
+
+He was seated in a chair, dejected and making himself as inoffensive
+as possible. Lady Webling had packed her own bag and was helping the
+helpless Sir Joseph find the things he was looking for in vain, though
+they were right before him. Marie Louise saw evidences that a larger
+packing had already been done. Verrinder had surprised them, about to
+flee.
+
+Sir Joseph was ready at last. He was closing his bag when he took a
+last glance, and said:
+
+"My toot'-brush and powder."
+
+He went to his bathroom cabinet, and there he saw in the little
+apothecary-shop a bottle of tablets prescribed for him during his
+illness. It was conspicuously labeled "_Poison_."
+
+He stood staring at the bottle so long in such fascination that Lady
+Webling came to the door to say:
+
+"Vat is it you could not find now, papa?"
+
+She leaned against the edge of the casement, and he pointed to the
+bottle. Their eyes met, and in one long look they passed through a
+brief Gethsemane. No words were exchanged. She nodded. He took the
+bottle from the shelf stealthily, unscrewed the top, poured out a heap
+of tablets and gave them to her, then poured another heap into his fat
+palm.
+
+"_Prosit_!" he said, and they flung the venom into their throats. It
+was brackish merely from the coating, but they could not swallow all
+the pellets. He filled a glass of water at the faucet and handed it to
+his wife. She quaffed enough to get the pellets down her resisting
+throat, and handed the glass to him.
+
+They remained staring at each other, trying to crowd into their eyes
+an infinity of strange passionate messages, though their features were
+all awry with nausea and the premonition of lethal pains.
+
+Verrinder began to wonder at their delay. He was about to rise. Marie
+Louise went to the door anxiously. Sir Joseph mumbled:
+
+"Look once, my darlink. I find some bong-bongs. Vould you like, yes?"
+
+With a childish canniness he held the bottle so that she could see the
+skull and cross-bones and the word beneath.
+
+Marie Louise, not realizing that they had already set out on the
+adventure, gave a stifled cry and snatched at the bottle. It fell to
+the floor with a crash, and the tablets leaped here and there like
+tiny white beetles. Some of them ran out into the room and caught
+Verrinder's eye.
+
+Before he could reach the door Sir Joseph had said, triumphantly, to
+Marie Louise:
+
+"Mamma and I did eat already. Too bad you do not come vit. _Adé,
+Töchterchen. Lebewohl!_"
+
+He was reaching his awkward arms out to clasp her when Verrinder burst
+into the homely scene of their tragedy. He caught up the broken bottle
+and saw the word "_Poison_." Beneath were the directions, but no word
+of description, no mention of the antidote.
+
+"What is this stuff?" Verrinder demanded, in a frenzy of dread and
+wrath and self-reproach.
+
+"I don't know," Marie Louise stammered.
+
+Verrinder repeated his demand of Sir Joseph.
+
+"_Weiss nit_," he mumbled, beginning to stagger as the serpent struck
+its fangs into his vitals.
+
+Verrinder ran out into the hall and shouted down the stairs:
+
+"Bickford, telephone for a doctor, in God's name--the nearest one.
+Send out to the nearest chemist and fetch him on the run--with every
+antidote he has. Send somebody down to the kitchen for warm water,
+mustard, coffee."
+
+There was a panic below, but Marie Louise knew nothing except the
+swirling tempest of her own horror. Sir Joseph and Lady Webling, blind
+with torment, wrung and wrenched with spasms of destruction, groped
+for each other's hands and felt their way through clouds of fire to a
+resting-place.
+
+Marie Louise could give them no help, but a little guidance toward the
+bed. They fell upon it--and after a hideous while they died.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The physician arrived too late--physicians were hard to get for
+civilians. While he was being hunted down and brought in, Verrinder
+fought an unknown poison with what antidotes he could improvise, and
+saw that they merely added annoyance to agony.
+
+His own failure had been unnerving. He had pursued this eminent couple
+for months, trying in vain to confirm suspicion by proof and
+strengthen assurance with evidence, and always delaying the blow in
+the hope of gathering in still more of Germany's agents. At last he
+had thrown the slowly woven net about the Weblings and revealed them
+to themselves as prisoners of his cunning. Then their souls slipped
+out through the meshes, leaving their useless empty bodies in his
+care, their bodies and the soul and body of the young woman who was
+involved in their guilt.
+
+Verrinder did not relish the story the papers would make of it. So he
+and the physician devised a statement for the press to the effect that
+the Weblings died of something they had eaten. The stomach of Europe
+was all deranged, and Sir Joseph had been famous for his dinners;
+there was a kind of ironic logic in his epitaph.
+
+Verrinder left the physician to fabricate and promulgate the story and
+keep him out of it. Then he addressed himself to the remaining
+prisoner, Miss Marie Louise Webling.
+
+He had no desire to display this minnow as his captive after the
+whales had got away, but he hoped to find her useful in solving some
+of the questions the Weblings had left unanswered when they bolted
+into eternity. Besides, he had no intention of letting Marie Louise
+escape to warn the other conspirators and to continue her nefarious
+activities.
+
+His first difficulty was not one of frightening Miss Webling into
+submission, but of soothing her into coherence. She had loved the old
+couple with a filial passion, and the sight of their last throes had
+driven her into a frenzy of grief. She needed the doctor's care before
+Verrinder could talk to her at all. The answers he elicited from her
+hysteria were full of contradiction, of evident ignorance, of
+inaccuracy, of folly. But so he had found all human testimony; for
+these three things are impossible to mankind: to see the truth, to
+remember it, and to tell it.
+
+When first Marie Louise came out of the avalanche of her woes, it was
+she who began the questioning. She went up and down the room
+disheveled, tear-smirched, wringing her hands and beating her breast
+till it hurt Verrinder to watch her brutality to that tender flesh.
+
+"What--what does it mean?" she sobbed. "What have you done to my poor
+papa and mamma? Why did you come here?"
+
+"Surely you must know."
+
+"What do I know? Only that they were good sweet people."
+
+"Good sweet spies!"
+
+"Spies! Those poor old darlings?"
+
+"Oh, I say--really, now, you surely can't have the face, the
+insolence, to--"
+
+"I haven't any insolence. I haven't anything but a broken heart."
+
+"How many hearts were broken--how many hearts were stopped, do you
+suppose, because of your work?"
+
+"My what?"
+
+"I refer to the lives that you destroyed."
+
+"I--I destroyed lives? Which one of us is going mad?"
+
+"Oh, come, now, you knew what you were doing. You were glad and proud
+for every poor fellow you killed."
+
+"It's you, then, that are mad." She stared at him in utter fear. She
+made a dash for the door. He prevented her. She fell back and looked
+to the window. He took her by the arm and twisted her into a chair. He
+had seen hysteria quelled by severity. He stood over her and spoke
+with all the sternness of his stern soul.
+
+"You will gain nothing by trying to make a fool of me. You carried
+messages for those people. The last messages you took you delivered to
+one of our agents."
+
+Her soul refused her even self-defense. She could only stammer the
+fact, hardly believing it as she put it forth:
+
+"I didn't know what was in the letters. I never knew."
+
+Verrinder was disgusted by such puerile defense:
+
+"What did you think was in them, then?"
+
+"I had no idea. Papa--Sir Joseph didn't take me into his confidence."
+
+"But you knew that they were secret."
+
+"He told me that they were--that they were business messages--secret
+financial transactions."
+
+"Transactions in British lives--oh, they were that! And you knew it."
+
+"I did not know it! I did not know it! I did not know it!"
+
+She realized too late that the strength of the retort suffered by its
+repetition. It became nonsense on the third iterance. She grew afraid
+even to defend herself.
+
+Seeing how frightened she was at bay, Mr. Verrinder forebore to drive
+her to distraction.
+
+"Very well, you did not know what the messages contained. But why did
+you consent to such sneaking methods? Why did you let them use you for
+such evident deceit?"
+
+"I was glad to be of use to them. They had been so good to me for so
+long. I was used to doing as I was told. I suppose it was gratitude."
+
+It was then that Mr. Verrinder delivered himself of his bitter opinion
+of gratitude, which has usually been so well spoken of and so rarely
+berated for excess.
+
+"Gratitude is one of the evils of the world. I fancy that few other
+emotions have done more harm. In moderation it has its uses, but in
+excess it becomes vicious. It is a form of voluntary servitude; it
+absolutely destroys all respect for public law; it is the foundation
+of tyrannies; it is the secret of political corruption; it is the
+thing that holds dynasties together, family despotism; it is
+soul-mortgage, bribery. It is a monster of what the Americans call
+graft. It is chloroform to the conscience, to patriotism, to every
+sense of public duty. 'Scratch my back, and I am your slave'--that's
+gratitude."
+
+Mr. Verrinder rarely spoke at such length or with such apothegm.
+
+Marie Louise was a little more dazed than ever to hear gratitude
+denounced. She was losing all her bearings. Next he demanded:
+
+"But admitting that you were duped by your gratitude, how did it
+happen that your curiosity never led you to inquire into the nature of
+those messages?"
+
+"I respected Sir Joseph beyond all people. I supposed that what he did
+was right. I never knew it not to be. And then--well, if, I did wonder
+a little once in a while, I thought I'd better mind my own business."
+
+Verrinder had his opinion of this, too. "Minding your own business!
+That's another of those poisonous virtues. Minding your own business
+leads to pacifism, malevolent neutrality, selfishness of every sort.
+It's death to charity and public spirit. Suppose the Good Samaritan
+had minded his own business! But-- Well, this is getting us no
+forwarder with you. You carried those messages, and never felt even a
+woman's curiosity about them! You met Nicky Easton often, and never
+noted his German accent, never suspected that he was not the
+Englishman he pretended to be. Is that true?"
+
+He saw by the wild look in her eyes and their escape from his own that
+he had scored a hit. He did not insist upon her acknowledging it.
+
+"And your only motive was gratitude?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You never asked any pay for it?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"You never received anything for it?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"We find the record of a transfer to you of securities for some twenty
+thousand pounds. Why was that given you?"
+
+"It--it was just out of generosity. Sir Joseph said he was afraid I
+might be--that his will might be broken, and--"
+
+"Ah! you discussed his will with him, then?"
+
+She was horrified at his implication. She cried, "Oh, I begged him not
+to, but he insisted."
+
+"He said there were other heirs and they might contest his will. Did
+he mention the heirs?"
+
+"No, sir. I don't think so. I don't remember that he did."
+
+"He did not by any chance refer to the other grandparents of the two
+children? Mr. and Mrs. Oakby, the father and mother of the father of
+Victor and Bettina?"
+
+"He didn't refer to them, I'm sure. Yes, I am quite sure."
+
+"Did he say that his money would be left in trust for his grandchildren?"
+
+"No."
+
+"And he gave you twenty thousand pounds just out of generosity?"
+
+"Yes. Yes, Mr. Verrinder."
+
+"It was a fairish amount of money for messenger fees, wasn't it? And
+it came to you while you were carrying those letters to Nicky?"
+
+"No! Sir Joseph had been ill. He had had a stroke of paralysis."
+
+"And you were afraid he might have another?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"You were not afraid of that?"
+
+"Yes, of course I was, but-- What are you trying to make me say--that
+I went to him and demanded the money?"
+
+"That idea occurs to you, does it?"
+
+She writhed with disgust at the suggestion. Yet it had a clammy
+plausibility. Mr. Verrinder went on:
+
+"These messages, you say, concerned a financial transaction?"
+
+"So papa told me."
+
+"And you believed him?"
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"You never doubted him?"
+
+All the tortures of doubt that had assailed her recurred to her now
+and paralyzed her power to utter the ringing denial that was needed.
+He went on:
+
+"Didn't it strike you as odd that Sir Joseph should be willing to pay
+you twenty thousand pounds just to carry messages concerning some
+mythical business?"
+
+She did not answer. She was afraid to commit herself to anything.
+Every answer was a trap. Verrinder went on: "Twenty thousand pounds is
+a ten-per-centum commission on two hundred thousand pounds. That was
+rather a largish transaction to be carried on through secret letters,
+eh? Nicky Easton was not a millionaire, was he? Now I ask you, should
+you think of him as a Rothschild? Or was he, do you think, acting as
+agent for some one else, perhaps, and if so, for whom?"
+
+She answered none of these. They were based on the assumption that she
+had put forward herself. She could find nothing to excuse her.
+Verrinder was simply playing tag with her. As soon as he touched her
+he ran away and came at her from another direction.
+
+"Of course, we know that you were only the adopted daughter of Sir
+Joseph. But where did you first meet him?"
+
+"In Berlin."
+
+The sound of that word startled her. That German name stood for all
+the evils of the time. It was the inaccessible throne of hell.
+
+Verrinder was startled by it, too.
+
+"In Berlin!" he exclaimed, and nodded his head. "Now we are getting
+somewhere. Would you mind telling me the circumstances?"
+
+She blushed a furious scarlet.
+
+"I--I'd rather not."
+
+"I must insist."
+
+"Please send me to the Tower and have me imprisoned for life. I'd
+rather be there than here. Or better yet--have me shot. It would make
+me happier than anything you could do."
+
+"I'm afraid that your happiness is not the main object of the moment.
+Will you be so good as to tell me how you met Sir Joseph in--in
+Berlin."
+
+Marie Louise drew a deep breath. The past that she had tried to
+smother under a new life must be confessed at such a time of all
+times!
+
+"Well, you know that Sir Joseph had a daughter; the two children
+up-stairs are hers, and--and what's to become of them, in Heaven's
+name?"
+
+"One problem at a time, if you don't mind. Sir Joseph had a daughter.
+That would be Mrs. Oakby."
+
+"Yes. Her husband died before her second baby was born, and she died
+soon after. And Sir Joseph and Lady Webling mourned for her bitterly,
+and--well, a year or so later they were traveling on the Continent--in
+Germany, they were, and one night they went to the Winter Garten in
+Berlin--the big music-hall, you know. Well, they were sitting far
+back, and an American team of musicians came on--the Musical Mokes, we
+were called."
+
+"We?"
+
+She bent her head in shame. "I was one of them. I played a xylophone
+and a saxophone and an accordion--all sorts of things. Well, Lady
+Webling gave a little gasp when she saw me, and she looked at Sir
+Joseph--so she told me afterward--and then they got up and stole 'way
+up front just as I left the stage--to make a quick change, you know. I
+came back--in tights, playing a big trombone, prancing round and
+making an awful noise. Lady Webling gave a little scream; nobody heard
+her because I made a loud blat on the trombone in the ear of the
+black-face clown, and he gave a shriek and did a funny fall, and--"
+
+"But, pardon me--why did Lady Webling scream?"
+
+"Because I looked like her dead daughter. It was so horrible to see
+her child come out of the grave in--in tights, blatting a trombone at
+a clown in that big variety theater."
+
+"I can quite understand. And then--"
+
+"Well, Sir Joseph came round to the stage door and sent in his card.
+The man who brought it grinned and told everybody an old man was
+smitten on me; and Ben, the black-face man, said, 'I'll break his
+face,' but I said I wouldn't see him.
+
+"Well, when I was dressed and leaving the theater with the black-face
+man, you know, Sir Joseph was outside. He stopped me and said: 'My
+child! My child!' and the tears ran down his face. I stopped, of
+course, and said, 'What's the matter now?' And he said, 'Would you
+come with me?' and I said, 'Not in a thousand years, old Creepo
+Christmas!' And he said: 'My poor wife is in the carriage at the curb.
+She wants to speak to you.' And then of course I had to go, and she
+reached out and dragged me in and wept all over me. I thought they
+were both crazy, but finally they explained, and they asked me to go
+to their hotel with them. So I told Ben to be on his way, and I went.
+
+"Well, they asked me a lot of questions, and I told them a little--not
+everything, but enough, Heaven knows. And they begged me to be their
+daughter. I thought it would be pretty stupid, but they said they
+couldn't stand the thought of their child's image going about as I
+was, and I wasn't so stuck on the job myself--odd, how the old
+language comes back, isn't it? I haven't heard any of it for so long
+I'd almost forgotten it." She passed her handkerchief across her lips
+as if to rub away a bad taste. It left the taste of tears. She sighed:
+"Well, they adopted me, and I learned to love them. And--and that's
+all."
+
+"And you learned to love their native country, too, I fancy."
+
+"At first I did like Germany pretty well. They were crazy about us in
+Berlin. I got my first big money and notices and attention there. You
+can imagine it went to my head. But then I came to England and tried
+to be as English as I could, so as not to be conspicuous. I never
+wanted to be conspicuous off the stage--or on it, for that matter. I
+even took lessons from the man who had the sign up, you remember,
+'Americans taught to speak English!' I always had a gift for foreign
+languages, and I got to thinking in English, too."
+
+"One moment, please. Did you say 'Americans taught?' Americans?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You're not American?"
+
+"Why, of course!"
+
+"Damned stupid of me!"
+
+Verrinder frowned. This complicated matters. He had cornered her, only
+to have her abscond into neutral territory. He had known that Marie
+Louise was an adopted child, but had not suspected her Americanism.
+This required a bit of thinking. While he studied it in the back room
+of his brain his forehead self was saying:
+
+"So Sir Joseph befriended you, and that was what won your amazing,
+unquestioning gratitude?"
+
+"That and a thousand thousand little kindnesses. I loved them like
+mother and father."
+
+"But your own--er--mother and father--you must have had parents of
+your own--what was their nationality?"
+
+"Oh, they were, as we say, 'Americans from 'way back.' But my father
+left my mother soon after I was born. We weren't much good, I guess.
+It was when I was a baby. He was very restless, they say. I suppose I
+got my runaway nature from him. But I've outgrown that. Anyway, he
+left my mother with three children. My little brother died. My mother
+was a seamstress in a little town out West--an awful hole it was. I
+was a tiny little girl when they took me to my mother's funeral. I
+remember that, but I can't remember her. That was my first death. And
+now this! I've lost a mother and father twice. That hasn't happened to
+many people. So you must forgive me for being so crazy. So many of my
+loved are dead. It's frightful. We lose so many as we grow up. Life is
+like walking through a graveyard, with the sextons always busy opening
+new places. There was so much crying and loneliness before, and now
+this war goes on and on--as if we needed a war!"
+
+"God knows, we don't."
+
+Marie Louise went to the window and raised the curtain. A haggard gray
+light had been piping the edges of the shade. Now the full casement
+let in a flood of warm morning radiance.
+
+The dull street was alive again. Sparrows were hopping. Wagons were on
+the move. Small and early tradesfolk were about their business.
+Servants were opening houses as shops were being opened in town.
+
+The big wheel had rolled London round into the eternal day. Doors and
+windows were being flung ajar. Newspapers and milk were taken in,
+ashes put out, cats and dogs released, front stoops washed, walks
+swept, gardens watered. Brooms were pendulating. In the masters' rooms
+it was still night and slumber-time, but humble people were alert.
+
+The morning after a death is a fearful thing. Those papers on the
+steps across the way were doubtless loaded with more tragedies from
+the front, and among the cruel facts was the lie that concealed the
+truth about the Weblings, who were to read no more morning papers, eat
+no more breakfasts, set out on no more journeys.
+
+Grief came to Marie Louise now with a less brackish taste. Her sorrow
+had the pity of the sunlight on it. She wept not now for the terror
+and hatefulness of the Weblings' fate, but for the beautiful things
+that would bless them no more, for the roses that would glow unseen,
+the flowers that would climb old walls and lean out unheeded, asking
+to be admired and proffering fragrance in payment of praise. The
+Weblings were henceforth immune to the pleasant rumble of wagons in
+streets, to the cheery good mornings of passers-by, the savor of
+coffee in the air, the luscious colors of fruits piled upon silver
+dishes.
+
+Then she heard a scamper of bare feet, the squeals of mischief-making
+children escaping from a pursuing nurse.
+
+It had been a favorite pastime of Victor and Bettina to break in upon
+Marie Louise of mornings when she forgot to lock her door. They loved
+to steal in barefoot and pounce on her with yelps of savage delight
+and massacre her, pull her hair and dance upon her bed and on her as
+she pleaded for mercy.
+
+She heard them coming now, and she could not reach the door before it
+opened and disclosed the grinning, tousle-curled cherubs in their
+sleeping-suits.
+
+They darted in, only to fall back in amazement. Marie Louise was not
+in bed. The bed had not been slept in. Marie Louise was all dressed,
+and she had been crying. And in a chair sat a strange, formidable old
+gentleman who looked tired and forlorn.
+
+"Auntie!" they gasped.
+
+She dropped to her knees, and they ran to her for refuge from the
+strange man.
+
+She hugged them so hard that they cried, "Don't!"
+
+Without in the least understanding what it was all about, they heard
+her saying to the man:
+
+"And now what's to become of these poor lambs?"
+
+The old stranger passed a slow gray hand across his dismal face and
+pondered.
+
+The children pointed, then remembered that it is impolite to point,
+and drew back their little index hands and whispered:
+
+"Auntie, what you up so early for?" and, "Who is that?"
+
+And she whispered, "S-h-h!"
+
+Being denied the answer to this charade, they took up a new interest.
+
+"I wonder is grandpapa up, too, and all dressed," said Victor.
+
+"And maybe grandmamma," Bettina shrilled.
+
+"I'll beat you to their room," said Victor.
+
+Marie Louise seized them by their hinder garments as they fled.
+
+"You must not bother them."
+
+"Why not?" said Victor.
+
+"Will so!" said Bettina, pawing to be free.
+
+Marie Louise implored: "Please, please! They've gone."
+
+"Where?"
+
+She cast her eyes up at that terrible query, and answered it vaguely.
+
+"Away."
+
+"They might have told a fellow good-by," Victor brooded.
+
+"They--they forgot, perhaps."
+
+"I don't think that was very nice of them," Bettina pouted.
+
+Victor was more cheerful. "Perhaps they did; perhaps they kissed us
+while we was asleep--_were_ asleep."
+
+Bettina accepted with delight.
+
+"Seems to me I 'member somebody kissin' me. Yes, I 'member now."
+
+Victor was skeptical. "Maybe you only had a dream about it."
+
+"What else is there?" said Mr. Verrinder, rising and patting Victor on
+the shoulder. "You'd better run along to your tubs now."
+
+They recognized the authority in his voice and obeyed.
+
+The children took their beauty with them, but left their destiny to be
+arranged by higher powers, the gods of Eld.
+
+"What is to become of them," Louise groaned again, "when I go to
+prison?"
+
+Verrinder was calm. "Sir Joseph's will doubtless left the bulk of his
+fortune to them. That will provide for their finances. And they have
+two grandparents left. The Oakbys will surely be glad to take the
+children in, especially as they will come with such fortunes."
+
+"You mean that I am to have no more to do with them?"
+
+"I think it would be best to remove them to a more strictly English
+influence."
+
+This hurt her horribly. She grew impatient for the finishing blow.
+
+"And now that they are disposed of, have you decided what's to become
+of me?"
+
+"It is not for me to decide. By the by, have you any one to represent
+you or intercede for you here, or act as your counsel in England?"
+
+She shook her head. "A good many people have been very nice to me, of
+course. I've noticed, though, that even they grew cold and distant of
+late. I'd rather die than ask any of them."
+
+"But have you no relatives living--no one of importance in the States
+who could vouch for you?"
+
+She shook her head with a doleful humility.
+
+"None of our family were ever important that I ever heard of, though
+of course one never knows what relatives are lurking about. Mine will
+never claim me; that's certain. I did have a sister--poor thing!--if
+she's alive. We didn't get along very well. I was too wild and
+restless as a girl. She was very good, hard-working, simple, homely as
+sin--or homely as virtue. I was all for adventure. I've had my fill of
+it. But once you begin it, you can't stop when you've had enough. If
+she's not dead, she's probably married and living under another
+name--Heaven knows what name or where. But I could find her, perhaps.
+I'd love to go to her. She was a very good girl. She's probably
+married a good man and has brought up her children piously, and never
+mentioned me. I'd only bring disgrace on her. She'd disown me if I
+came home with this cloud of scandal about me."
+
+"No one shall know of this scandal unless you tell."
+
+She laughed harshly, with a patronizing superiority.
+
+"Really, Mr. Verrinder, did you ever know a secret to be kept?"
+
+"This one will be."
+
+She laughed again at him, then at herself.
+
+He rose wearily. "I think I shall have to be getting along. I haven't
+had a bath or a shave to-day. I shall ask you to keep to your room and
+deny yourself to all visitors. I won't ask you to promise not to
+escape. If the guard around the house is not capable of detaining you,
+you're welcome to your freedom, though I warn you that England is as
+hard to get out of as to get into nowadays. Whatever you do, for your
+own sake, at least, keep this whole matter secret and stick to the
+story we agreed on. Good morning!"
+
+He bowed himself out. No rattling of chains marked his closing of the
+door, but if he had been a turnkey in Newgate he could not have left
+Marie Louise feeling more a prisoner. Her room was her body's jail,
+but her soul was in a dungeon, too.
+
+As Verrinder went down the hall he scattered a covey of whispering
+servants.
+
+The nurse who had waited to seize the children when they came forth
+had left them to dress themselves while she hastened to publish in the
+servants' dining-room the appalling fact that she had caught sight of
+a man in Miss Marie Louise's room. The other servants had many other
+even more astounding things to tell--to wit: that after mysterious
+excitements about the house, with strange men going and coming, and
+the kitchen torn to pieces for mustard and warm milk and warm water
+and strong coffee, and other things, Sir Joseph and Lady Webling were
+no more, and the whole household staff was out of a job. Strange
+police-like persons were in the house, going through all the papers in
+Sir Joseph's room. The servants could hardly wait to get out with the
+gossip.
+
+And Mr. Verrinder had said that this secret would be kept!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Somewhere along about this time, though there is no record of the
+exact date--and it was in a shabby home in a humble town where dates
+made little difference--a homely woman sniffed.
+
+Her name was Mrs. Nuddle.
+
+What Mrs. Nuddle was sniffing at was a page of fashion cartoons,
+curious human hieroglyphs that women can read and run to buy.
+Highly improbable garments were sketched on utterly impossible
+figures--female eels who could crawl through their own garters, eels
+of strange mottlings, with heads like cranberries, feet like thorns,
+and no spines at all.
+
+Mrs. Nuddle was as opposite in every way as could be. She could not
+have crawled through her own washtub if she had knocked the bottom out
+of it. She was a caricature made by nature and long, hard work, and
+she laughed at the caricatures devised by art in a hurry.
+
+She was about to cast the paper aside as a final rebuke when she
+caught sight of portraits of real people of fashion. They did not look
+nearly so fashionable as the cartoons, but they were at least
+possible. Some of them were said to be prominent in charity; most of
+them were prominent out of their corsages.
+
+Now Mrs. Nuddle sniffed at character, not at caricature. Leaning
+against her washtub and wringer, both as graceful as their engineer,
+she indulged herself in the pitiful but unfailing solace of the poor
+and the ugly, which is to attribute to the rich dishonesty and to the
+beautiful wickedness.
+
+The surf Mrs. Nuddle had raised in the little private sea of her tub
+had died down, and a froth of soap dried on the rawhide of her big
+forearms as her heifer eyes roamed the newspaper-gallery of portraits.
+One sudsy hand supported and suppressed her smile of ridicule. These
+women, belles and swells, were all as glossy as if they had been
+ironed.
+
+Mrs. Nuddle sneered: "If the hussies would do an honest day's work it
+would be better for their figgers." She was mercifully oblivious of
+the fact that her tub-calisthenics had made her no more exquisite than
+a cow in a kimono.
+
+Mrs. Nuddle scorned the lily-fingered tulip-fleshed beauties. Their
+sentimental alarms had nothing in common with her problem, which was
+the riddle of a husband who was faithful only to the bottle, who was
+indifferent to the children he got so easily, and was poetical only in
+that he never worked save when the mood was on him.
+
+Again Mrs. Nuddle made to cast aside the paper that had come into her
+home wrapped round a bundle of laundry. But now she was startled, and
+she would have startled anybody who might have been watching her, for
+she stared hard at a photographed beauty and gasped:
+
+"Sister!"
+
+She in her disordered garb, unkempt, uncorseted, and uncommonly
+common, greeted with the word "Sister!" the photograph of a very
+young, very beautiful, very gracile creature, in a mannish costume
+that emphasized her femininity, in a foreign garden, in a braw hat
+with curls cascading from under it, with a throat lilying out of a
+flaring collar, with hands pocketed in a smart jacket, and below that
+a pair of most fashionable legs in riding-breeches and puttees! She
+carried not a parasol nor a riding-crop, but a great reaping-hook
+swung across her shoulder, and she smiled as impudently, as
+immortally, as if she were Youth and had slain old Time and carried
+off his scythe.
+
+The picture did not reply to Mrs. Nuddle's cry, but Mrs. Nuddle's
+eldest daughter, a precocious little adventuress of eleven or so, who
+was generally called "Sister," turned from the young brother whose
+smutty face she was just smacking and snapped:
+
+"Aw, whatcha want?"
+
+Little Sister supposed that her irritating mother was going to tell
+her to stop doing something, or to start doing something--either of
+which behests she always hated and only obeyed because her mother was
+bigger than she was. She turned and saw her mother swaying and
+clutching at the air. Sister had a gorgeous hope that mother would
+fall into the tub and be interesting for once. But mother was a born
+disappointer. She shook off the promising swoon, righted herself, and
+began fiercely to scan the paper to find out whose name the picture
+bore. The caption was torn off.
+
+Being absolutely sure who it was, she wanted to find out who it really
+was.
+
+In her frantic curiosity she remembered that her husband had stripped
+off a corner of the paper, dipped it in the stove, lighted his pipe
+with it, thrown it flaming on the floor, spat it out with practised
+accuracy, and trodden it as he went away. Mrs. Nuddle ran to pick it
+up.
+
+On the charred remnant she read:
+
+  The Beautiful Miss.... One of London's reigning beaut.... daughter
+  of Sir Joseph W.... doing farm work on the estate in....
+
+Mrs. Nuddle sniffed no more. She flopped to a backless chair and
+squatted in a curious burlesque of Rodin's statue of "The Thinker."
+One heavy hand pinched her dewlap. Her hair was damp with steam and
+raining about her face. Her old waist was half buttoned, and no one
+would have regretted if it had been all buttoned. She was as plebeian
+as an ash-can and as full of old embers.
+
+She was still immobilized when her husband came in. Now he gasped. His
+wife was loafing! sitting down! in the middle of the day! Thinking was
+loafing with her. He was supposed to do the family thinking. It was
+doubly necessary that she should work now, because he was on a strike.
+He had been to a meeting of other thinkers--ground and lofty thinkers
+who believed that they had discovered the true evil of the world and
+its remedy.
+
+The evil was the possession of money by those who had accumulated it.
+The remedy was to take it away from them. Then the poor would be rich,
+which was right, and the rich would be poor, which was righter still.
+
+It was well known that the only way to end the bad habit of work was
+to quit working. And the way to insure universal prosperity was to
+burn down the factories and warehouses, destroy all machinery and
+beggar the beasts who invented, invested, built, and hired and tried
+to get rich by getting riches.
+
+This program would take some little time to perfect, and meanwhile
+Jake was willing that his wife should work. Indeed, a sharp fear
+almost unmanned him--what if she should fall sick and have to loaf in
+the horsepital? What if she should die? O Gord! Her little children
+would be left motherless--and fatherless, for he would, of course, be
+too busy saving the world to save his children. He would lose, too,
+the prestige enjoyed only by those who have their money in their
+wife's name. So he spoke to her with more than his wonted gentleness:
+
+"Whatta hellsa matter wit choo?"
+
+She felt the unusual concern in his voice, and smiled at him as best
+she could:
+
+"I got a kind of a jolt. I seen this here pitcher, and I thought for a
+minute it was my sister."
+
+"Your sister? How'd she get her pitcher in the paper? Who did she
+shoot?"
+
+He snatched the sheet from her and saw the young woman in the
+young-manly garb.
+
+Jake gloated over the picture: "Some looker! What is she, a queen in
+burlecue?"
+
+Mrs. Nuddle held out the burned sliver of paper.
+
+He roared. "London's ranging beaut? And you're what thinks she's your
+sister! The one that ran away? Was she a beaut like this?"
+
+Mrs. Nuddle nodded. He whistled and said, with great tact:
+
+"Cheese! but I have the rotten luck! Why didn't I see her first?
+Whyn't you tell me more about her? You never talk about her none. Why
+not?" No answer. "All I know is she went wrong and flew the coop."
+
+Mrs. Nuddle flared at this. "Who said she went wrong?"
+
+"You did!" Jake retorted with vigor. "Usedn't you to keep me awake
+praying for her--hollerin' at God to forgive her? Didn't you, or did
+you?" No answer. "And you think this is her!" The ridiculousness of
+the fantasy smote him. "Say, you must 'a' went plumb nutty! Bendin'
+over that tub must 'a' gave you a rush of brains to the head."
+
+He laughed uproariously till she wanted to kill him. She tried to take
+back what she had said:
+
+"Don't you set there tellin' me I ever told you nothin' mean about my
+pore little sister. She was as good a girl as ever lived, Mamise
+was."
+
+"You're changin' your tune now, ain'tcha? Because you think she looks
+like a grand dam in pants! And where dya get that Mamise stuff? What
+was her honestogawd name? Maryer? You're tryin' to swell her up a
+little, huh?"
+
+"No, I ain't. She was named Marie Louise after her gran'-maw, on'y
+as a baby she couldn't say it right. She said 'Mamise.' That's what
+she called her poor little self--Mamise. Seems like I can see her
+now, settin' on the floor like Sister. And where is she now? O
+Gawd! whatever become of her, runnin' off thataway--a little
+sixteen-year-ol' chile, runnin' off with a cheap thattical troupe,
+because her aunt smacked her.
+
+"She never had no maw and no bringin' up, and she was so pirty. She
+had all the beauty of the fambly, folks all said."
+
+"And that ain't no lie," said Jake, with characteristic gallantry.
+"There's nothin' but monopoly everywheres in the world. She got all
+the looks and I got you. I wonder who got her!"
+
+Jake sighed as he studied the paper, ransacked it noisily for an
+article about her, but, finding none, looked at the date and growled:
+
+"Aw, this paper's nearly a year old--May, 1916, it says."
+
+This quelled his curiosity a little, and he turned to his dinner,
+flinging it into his jaws like a stoker. His wife went slip-slopping
+from stove to table, ministering to him.
+
+Jake Nuddle did not look so dangerous as he was. He was like an old
+tomato-can that an anarchist has filled with dynamite and provided
+with a trigger for the destruction of whosoever disturbs it.
+Explosives are useful in place. But Jake was of the sort that blow up
+regardless of the occasion.
+
+His dynamite was discontent. He hated everybody who was richer or
+better paid, better clothed, better spoken of than he was. Yet he had
+nothing in him of that constructive envy which is called emulation and
+leads to progress, to days of toil, nights of thought. His idea of
+equality was not to climb to the peak, but to drag the climbers down.
+Prating always of the sufferings of the poor, he did nothing to soothe
+them or remove them. His only contribution to the improvement of wages
+was to call a strike and get none at all. His contribution to the war
+against oppressive capital was to denounce all successful men as
+brutes and tyrants, lumping the benefactors with the malefactors.
+
+Men of his type made up the blood-spillers of the French Revolution,
+and the packs of the earlier Jacquerie, the thugs who burned châteaux
+and shops, and butchered women as well as men, growling their ominous
+refrain:
+
+"Noo sum zum cum eel zaw" ("_Nous sommes hommes comme ils sont_").
+
+The Jake Nuddles were hate personified. They formed secret armies of
+enemies now inside the nation and threatened her success in the war.
+The thing that prevented their triumph was that their blunders were
+greater than their malice, their folly more certain than their
+villainy. As soon as America entered the lists against Germany, the
+Jake Nuddles would begin doing their stupid best to prevent
+enlistment, to persuade desertion, to stop war-production, to wreck
+factories and trains, to ruin sawmills and burn crops. In the name of
+freedom they would betray its most earnest defenders, compel the
+battle-line to face both ways. They were more subtle than the snaky
+spies of Germany, and more venomous.
+
+As he wolfed his food now, Jake studied the picture of Marie Louise.
+The gentlest influence her beauty exerted upon him was a beastly
+desire. He praised her grace because it tortured his wife. But even
+fiercer than his animal impulse was his rage of hatred at the look of
+cleanliness and comeliness, the environment of luxury only emphasized
+by her peasant disguise.
+
+When he had mopped his plate with his bread, he took up the paper
+again and glared at it with hostile envy.
+
+"Dammer and her arristocratic ways! Daughter of a Sir and a Lady, eh?
+Just wait till we get through with them Sirs and Ladies. We'll mow 'em
+down. You'll see. Robbin' us poor toilers that does all the work!
+We'll put an end to their peerages and their deer-parks. What Germany
+leaves of these birds we'll finish up. And then we'll take this rotten
+United States, the rottenest tyranny of all. Gawdammit! You just
+wait!"
+
+His wife just waited till he had smashed the picture in the face,
+knocked the pretty lady's portrait to the floor and walked on it as he
+strode out to his revolution. Incidentally he trod on little Sister's
+hand, and she sent up a caterwaul. Her little brother howled in duet.
+Then father turned on them.
+
+"Aw, shut up or I'll--"
+
+He did not finish his sentence. He rarely finished anything--except
+his meals. He left his children crying and his wife in a new distress;
+but then, revolutions cannot pause for women and children.
+
+When he had gone, and Sister's tears had dried on her smutty face,
+Mrs. Nuddle picked up the smitten and trampled picture of England's
+reigning beauty and thought how lucky Miss W. was to be in England,
+blissful on Sir and Lady Somebody-or-other's estate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+When Mr. Verrinder left Marie Louise he took from her even the props
+of hostility. She had nothing to lean on now, nobody to fight with for
+life and reputation. She had only suspense and confusion. Agitated
+thoughts followed one another in waves across her soul--grief for her
+foster-father and mother, memory of their tendernesses, remorse for
+seeming to have deserted them in their last hours, remorse for having
+been the dupe of their schemes, and remorse for that remorse, grief at
+losing the lovable, troublesome children, creature distress at giving
+up the creature comforts of the luxurious home, the revulsion of her
+unfettered mind and her restless young body at the prospect of
+exchanging liberty and occupation for the half-death of an idle
+cell--a kind of coffin residence--fear of being executed as a spy, and
+fear of being released to drag herself through life with the ball and
+chain of guilt forever rolling and clanking at her feet.
+
+Verrinder's mind was hardly more at rest when he left her and walked
+to his rooms. He carried the regret of a protector of England who had
+bungled his task and let the wards of his suspicion break loose. The
+fault was not his, but he would never escape the reproach. He had no
+taste for taking revenge on the young woman. It would not salve his
+pride to visit on her pretty head the thwarted punishments due Sir
+Joseph and his consort in guilt. Besides, in spite of his cynicism, he
+had been touched by Marie Louise's sincerities. She proved them by the
+very contradictions of her testimony, with its history of keen
+intelligence alternating with curious blindness. He knew how people
+get themselves all tangled up in conflicting duties, how they let
+evils slide along, putting off till to-morrow the severing of the
+cords and the stepping forth with freedom from obligation. He knew
+that the very best people, being those who are most sensitive to
+gratitude and to other people's pains, are incessantly let in for
+complications that never involve selfish or self-righteous persons.
+
+As an executive of the law, he knew how many laws there are unwritten
+and implied that make obedience to the law an experiment in
+caddishness and ingratitude. There were reasons enough then to believe
+that Marie Louise had meant no harm and had not understood the evil in
+which she was so useful an accomplice. Even if she were guilty and her
+bewilderment feigned, her punishment would be untimely at this moment
+when the Americans who abhorred and distrusted Germany had just about
+persuaded the majority of their countrymen that the world would be
+intolerable if Germany triumphed, and that the only hope of defeating
+her tyranny lay in joining hands with England, France, and Italy.
+
+The enemies of England would be only too glad to make a martyr out of
+Miss Webling if she were disciplined by England. She would be
+advertised, as a counterweight to the hideous mistake the Germans made
+in immortalizing with their bullets the poor little nurse, "_die_
+Cavell."
+
+Verrinder was not himself at all till he had bathed, shaved, and
+clothed his person in clean linen and given his inner man its tea and
+toast. Once this restoration was made, his tea deferred helped him to
+the conclusion that the one wise thing was to restore Marie Louise
+quietly to her own country. He went with freshened step and determined
+mind to a conference with the eminent men concerned. He made his own
+confession of failure and took more blame than he need have accepted.
+Then he told his plans for Marie Louise and made the council agree
+with him.
+
+Early in the afternoon he called on Miss Webling and found the house a
+flurry of undertakers, curious relatives, and thwarted reporters. The
+relatives and the reporters he satisfied with a few well-chosen lies.
+Then he sent his name up to Marie Louise. The butler thrust the
+card-tray through the door as if he were tossing a bit of meat to some
+wild animal.
+
+"I'll be down," said Marie Louise, and she primped herself like
+another Mary Queen of Scots receiving a call from the executioner. She
+was calmed by the hope that she would learn her fate, at least, and
+she cared little what it was, so long as it was not unknown.
+
+Verrinder did not delay to spread his cards on the table.
+
+"Miss Webling, I begin again with a question: If we should offer you
+freedom and silence, would you go back to America and tell no one of
+what has happened here?"
+
+The mere hint was like flinging a door open and letting the sunlight
+into a dungeon. The very word "America" was itself a rush of fresh
+air. The long-forgotten love of country came back into her heart on a
+cry of hope.
+
+"Oh, you don't mean that you might?"
+
+"We might. In fact, we will, if you will promise--"
+
+She could not wait for his formal conclusion. She broke in: "I'll
+promise anything--anything! Oh I don't want to be free just for the
+sake of escaping punishment! No, no. I just want a chance to--to
+expiate the evil I have done. I want to do some good to undo all the
+bad I've brought about. I won't try to shift any blame. I want to
+confess. It will take this awful load off my heart to tell people what
+a wicked fool I've been."
+
+Verrinder checked her: "But that is just what you must not do. Unless
+you can assure us that you will carry this burden about with you and
+keep it secret at no matter what cost, then we shall have to proceed
+with the case--legally. We shall have to exhume Sir Joseph and Lady
+Webling, as it were, and drag the whole thing through the courts. We'd
+really rather not, but if you insist--"
+
+"Oh, I'll promise. I'll keep the secret. Let them rest."
+
+She was driven less by the thought of her own liberty than the terror
+of exposing the dead. The mere thought brought back pictures of
+hideous days when the grave was not refuge enough from vengeance, when
+bodies were dug up, gibbeted, haled by a chain along the unwashed
+cobblestones, quartered with a sword in the market-place and then
+flung back to the dark.
+
+Verrinder may have feared that Marie Louise yielded under duress, and
+that when she was out of reach of the law she would forget, so he
+said
+
+"Would you swear to keep this inviolate?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Have you a Bible?"
+
+She thought there must be one, and she searched for it among the
+bookshelves. But first she came across one in the German tongue. It
+fell open easily, as if it had been a familiar companion of Sir
+Joseph's. She abhorred the sight of the words that youthful
+Sunday-school lessons had given an unearthly sanctity as she
+recognized them twisted into the German paraphrase and printed in the
+twisted German type. But she said:
+
+"Will this do?"
+
+Verrinder shook his head. "I don't know that an oath on a German Bible
+would really count. It might be considered a mere heap of paper."
+
+Marie Louise put it aside and brushed its dust off her fingers. She
+found an English Bible after a further search. Its pages had seen the
+light but seldom. It slipped from her hand and fell open. She knelt to
+pick it up with a tremor of fear.
+
+She rose, and before she closed it glanced at the page before her.
+These words caught her eye:
+
+  For thus saith the Lord God of Israel unto me. Take the winecup of
+  this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send
+  thee, to drink it. And they shall drink, and be moved, and be mad
+  because of the sword that I will send among them.
+
+She showed them to Verrinder. He nodded solemnly, took the book from
+her hand, closed it, and held it before her. She put the slim tips of
+her young fingers near the talon of his old thumb and echoed in a
+timid, silvern voice the broken phrases he spoke in a tone of bronze:
+
+"I solemnly swear--that so long as I live--I will tell no one--what I
+know--of the crimes and death--of Sir Joseph and Lady Webling--unless
+called upon--in a court of law. This oath is made--with no mental
+reservations--and is binding--under all circumstances whatsoever--so
+help me God!"
+
+When she had whispered the last invocation he put the book away and
+gripped her hand in his.
+
+"I must remind you that releasing you is highly illegal--and perhaps
+immoral. Our action might be overruled and the whole case opened. But
+I think you are safe, especially if you get to America--the sooner the
+better."
+
+"Thank you!" she said.
+
+He laughed, somewhat pathetically.
+
+"Good luck!"
+
+He did not tell her that England would still be watching over her,
+that her name and her history were already cabled to America, that
+she would be shadowed to the steamer, observed aboard the boat,
+and picked up at the dock by the first of a long series of detectives
+constituting a sort of serial guardian angel.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+IN NEW YORK
+
+[Illustration: "This is the life for me. I've been a heroine and a
+war-worker about as long as I can."]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Leaving England quickly was not easy in those days. Passenger-steamers
+were few, irregular, and secret. The passport regulations were
+exceedingly rigorous, and even Mr. Verrinder's influence could not
+speed the matter greatly.
+
+There was the Webling estate to settle up, also. At Verrinder's
+suggestion Marie Louise put her affairs into the hands of counsel, and
+he arranged her surrender of all claims on the Webling estate. But he
+insisted that she should keep the twenty thousand pounds that had been
+given to her absolutely. He may have been influenced in this by his
+inability to see from what other funds he could collect his fee.
+
+Eventually he placed her aboard a liner, and her bonds in the purser's
+safe; and eventually the liner stole out into the ocean, through such
+a gantlet of lurking demons as old superstitions peopled it with.
+
+She had not told the children good-by, but had delivered them to the
+Oakbys and run away. The Oakbys had received her with a coldness that
+startled her. They used the expression, "Under the circumstances,"
+with a freezing implication that made her wonder if the secret had
+already trickled through to them.
+
+On the steamer there was nobody she knew. At the dock no friends
+greeted her. She did not notice that her arrival was noted by a
+certain Mr. Larrey, who had been detailed to watch her and saw with
+some pride how pretty she was. "It'll be a pleasure to keep an eye on
+her," he told a luckless colleague who had a long-haired pacifist
+professor allotted to him. But Marie Louise's mystic squire had not
+counted on her stopping in New York for only a day and then setting
+forth on a long, hot, stupid train-ride of two days to the little town
+of her birth, Wakefield.
+
+Larrey found it appalling. Marie Louise found it far smaller and
+shabbier than she had imagined. Yet it had grown some, too, since her
+time.
+
+At least, most of the people she had known had moved away to the
+cities or the cemeteries, and new people had taken their place. She
+had not known many of the better people. Her mother had been too
+humble to sew for them.
+
+Coming from London and the country life of England, she found the town
+intolerably ugly. It held no associations for her. She had been
+unhappy there, and she said: "Poor me! No wonder I ran away." She
+justified her earlier self with a kind of mothering sympathy. She
+longed for some one to mother her present self.
+
+But her sister was not to be found. The old house where they had lived
+was replaced by a factory that had made suspenders and now was turning
+out cartridge-belts. She found no one who knew her sister at all. She
+did not give her own name, for many reasons, and her face was not
+remembered. A few people recalled the family. The town marshal vaguely
+placed her father as a frequent boarder at the jail.
+
+One sweet old lady, for whom Marie Louise's mother had done sewing,
+had a kind of notion that one of the sisters had run away and that the
+other sister had left town with somebody for somewhere sometime after.
+But that was all that the cupboard of her recollection disclosed.
+
+Anatole France has a short story of Pilate in his old age meeting his
+predecessor as Proconsul in Jerusalem. During their senile gossip the
+elder asks if Pilate had known a certain beauty named Mary of Magdala.
+Pilate shakes his head. The other has heard that she took up with a
+street-preacher called Jesus from the town of Nazareth. Pilate
+ponders, shakes his head again, and confesses, "I don't remember
+him."
+
+It was not strange, then, that Marie Louise's people, who had made
+almost no impression on the life of the town, should have lapsed from
+its memory. But it was discouraging. Marie Louise felt as much of an
+anachronism as old Rip Van Winkle, though she looked no more like him
+than an exquisite, fashionable young woman could look like a
+gray-bearded sot who has slept in his clothes for twenty years.
+
+Her private detective, Larrey, homesick for New York, was overjoyed
+when she went back, but she was disconsolate and utterly detached from
+life. The prodigal had come home, but the family had moved away.
+
+She took a comfortable little nook in an apartment hotel and settled
+down to meditate. The shops interested her, and she browsed away among
+them for furniture and clothes and books.
+
+Marie Louise had not been in her homeless home long when the President
+visited Congress and asked it to declare a state of war against
+Germany. She was exultant over the great step, but the wilful few who
+held Congress back from answering the summons revealed to her why the
+nation had been so slow in responding to the crisis. Even now, after
+so much insult and outrage, vast numbers of Americans denied that
+there was any cause for war.
+
+But the patience of the majority had been worn thin. The opposition
+was swept away, and America declared herself in the arena--in spirit
+at least. Impatient souls who had prophesied how the millions would
+spring to arms overnight wondered at the failure to commit a miracle.
+The Germans, who had prepared for forty years, laughed at the new
+enemy and felt guaranteed by five impossibilities: that America should
+raise a real army, or equip it, or know how to train it, or be able to
+get it past the submarine barrier, or feed the few that might sneak
+through.
+
+America's vast resources were unready, unwieldy, unknown. The first
+embarrassment was the panic of volunteers.
+
+Marie Louise was only one of the hundred million who sprang madly in
+all directions and landed nowhere. She wanted to volunteer, too, but
+for what? What could she do? Where could she get it to do? In the
+chaos of her impatience she did nothing.
+
+Supping alone at the Biltmore one night, she was seen, hailed, and
+seized by Polly Widdicombe. Marie Louise's detective knew who Polly
+was. He groaned to note that she was the first friend his client had
+found.
+
+Polly, giggling adorably, embraced her and kissed her before everybody
+in the big Tudor Room. And Polly's husband greeted her with warmth of
+hand and voice.
+
+Marie Louise almost wept, almost cried aloud with joy. The prodigal
+was home, had been welcomed with a kiss. Evidently her secret had not
+crossed the ocean. She could take up life again. Some day the past
+would confront and denounce her, perhaps; but for the moment she was
+enfranchised anew of human society.
+
+Polly said that she had read of Sir Joseph's death and his wife's, and
+what a shock it must have been to poor Marie Louise, but how well she
+bore up under it, and how perfectly darn beautiful she was, and what a
+shame that it was almost midnight! She and her hub were going to
+Washington. Everybody was, of course. Why wasn't Marie Louise there?
+And Polly's husband was to be a major--think of it! He was going to be
+all dolled up in olive drab and things and-- "Damn the clock, anyway;
+if we miss that train we can't get on another for days. And what's
+your address? Write it on the edge of that bill of fare and tear it
+off, and I'll write you the minute I get settled, for you must come to
+us and nowhere else and-- Good-by, darling child, and-- All right,
+Tom, I'm coming!"
+
+And she was gone.
+
+Marie Louise went back to her seclusion much happier and yet much
+lonelier. She had found a friend who had not heard of her disgrace.
+She had lost a friend who still rejoiced to see her.
+
+But her faithful watchman was completely discouraged. When he turned
+in his report he threatened to turn in his resignation unless he were
+relieved of the futile task of recording Marie Louise's blameless and
+eventless life.
+
+And then the agent's night was turned to day--at least his high noon
+was turned to higher. For a few days later Marie Louise was abruptly
+addressed by Nicky Easton.
+
+She had been working in the big Red Cross shop on Fifth Avenue,
+rolling bandages and making dressings with a crowd of other
+white-fingered women. A cable had come that there was a sudden need
+for at least ten thousand bandages. These were not yet for American
+soldiers in France, though their turn would come, and their wholesale
+need. But as Marie Louise wrought she could imagine the shattered
+flesh, the crying nerves of some poor patriot whose gaping wound this
+linen pack would smother. And her own nerves cried out in vicarious
+crucifixion. At noon she left the factory for a little air and a bite
+of lunch.
+
+Nicky Easton appeared out of her list of the buried. She gasped at
+sight of him.
+
+"I thought you were dead."
+
+He laughed: "If I am it, thees is my _Doppelgänger_." And he began to
+hum with a grisly smile Schubert's setting to Heine's poem of the man
+who met his own ghost and double, aping his love-sorrow outside the
+home of his dead sweetheart:
+
+              "_Der Mond zeigt mir meine eig'ne Gestalt.
+              Du Doppelgänger, du bleicher Geselle!
+              Was äffst du nach mein Liebesleid,
+              Das mich gequält auf dieser Stelle
+              So manche Nacht in alter Zeit._"
+
+Marie Louise was terrified by the harrowing emotions the song always
+roused in her, but more by the dreadful sensation of walking that
+crowded Avenue with a man humming German at her side.
+
+"Hush! Hush, in Heaven's name!" she pleaded.
+
+He laughed Teutonically, and asked her to lunch with him.
+
+"I have another engagement, and I am late," she said.
+
+"Where are you living?"
+
+She felt inspired to give him a false address. He insisted on walking
+with her to the Waldorf, where she said her engagement was.
+
+"You don't ask me where I have been?"
+
+"I was just going to. The last I heard you were in the London Tower or
+somewhere. However did you get out?"
+
+"The same way like you ditt. I thought you should choin me therein,
+but you also told all you knew and some more yet, yes?"
+
+She saw then that he had turned state's evidence. Perhaps he had
+betrayed Sir Joseph. Somehow she found it possible to loathe him
+extra. She lacked the strength to deny his odious insinuation about
+herself. He went on:
+
+"Now I am in America. I could not dare go to Germany now. But here I
+try to gain back my place in _Deutschland_. These English think they
+use me for a stool-pitcheon. But they will find out, and when
+_Deutschland ist über alles--ach, Gott_! You shall help me. We do some
+work togedder. I come soon by your house. _Auf_--Goot-py."
+
+He left her at the hotel door and lifted his hat. She went into the
+labyrinth and lost herself. When her heart had ceased fluttering and
+she grew calm from very fatigue of alarm she resolved to steal out of
+New York.
+
+She spent an afternoon and an evening of indecision. Night brought
+counsel. Polly Widdicombe had offered her a haven, and in the country.
+It would be an ideal hiding-place. She set to work at midnight packing
+her trunk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Marie Louise tried all the next morning to telephone from New York to
+Washington, but it seemed that everybody on earth was making the same
+effort. It was a wire Babel.
+
+Washington was suddenly America in the same way that London had long
+been England; and Paris France. The entire population was apparently
+trying to get into Washington in order to get out again. People wrote,
+telegraphed, radiographed, telephoned, and traveled thither by all
+the rail- and motor-roads. Washington was the narrow neck of the
+funnel leading to the war, and the sleepy old home of debate and
+administration was suddenly dumfounded to find itself treated to all
+the horrors of a boom-town--it was like San Francisco in '49.
+
+Marie Louise, who had not yet recovered her American dialect, kept
+pleading with Long Distance:
+
+"Oh, I say, cahn't you put me through to Washington? It's no end
+important, really! Rosslyn, seven three one two. I want to speak to
+Mrs. Widdicombe. I am Miss Webling. Thank you."
+
+The obliging central asked her telephone number and promised to call
+her in a moment. Eternity is but a moment--to some centrals. Marie
+Louise, being finite and ephemeral, never heard from that central
+again. Later she took up the receiver and got another central, who had
+never heard her tale of woe and had to have it all over again. This
+central also asked her name and number and promised to report, then
+vanished into the interstellar limbo where busy centrals go.
+
+Again and again Marie Louise waited and called, and told and retold
+her prayer till it turned to gibberish and she began to doubt her own
+name and to mix the telephone number hopelessly. Then she went into
+her hand-bag and pawed about in the little pocket edition of confusion
+till she found the note that Polly had sent her at once from
+Washington with the address, Grinden Hall, Rosslyn, and the telephone
+number and the message.
+
+  So glad you're on this side of the water, dear. Do run over and
+  see us. Perfect barn of a house, and lost in the country, but
+  there's always room--especially for you, dear. You'll never get in
+  at a hotel.
+
+Marie Louise propped this against the telephone and tried again.
+
+The seventh central dazed her with, "We can take nothing but gov'ment
+business till two P.M."
+
+Marie Louise rose in despair, searched in her bag for her watch,
+gasped, put the watch and the note back in her bag, snapped it, and
+rose to go.
+
+She decided to send Polly a telegram. She took out the note for the
+address and telephoned a telegram, saying that she would arrive at
+five o'clock. The telegraph-operator told her that the company could
+not guarantee delivery, as traffic over the wires was very heavy.
+Marie Louise sighed and rose, worn out with telephone-fag.
+
+She told the maid to ask the hall-boy to get her a taxi, and hastily
+made ready to leave. Her trunks had gone to the station an hour ago,
+and they had been checked through from the house.
+
+Her final pick-up glance about the room did not pick up the note she
+had propped on the telephone-table. She left it there and closed the
+door on another chapter of her life.
+
+She rode to the station, and, after standing in line for a weary
+while, learned that not a seat was to be had in a parlor-car to-day,
+to-morrow, or any day for two weeks. Berths at night were still more
+unobtainable.
+
+She decided that she might as well go in a day-coach. Scores of people
+had had the same idea before her. The day-coaches were filled. She
+sidled through the crowded aisles and found no seat. She invaded the
+chair-cars in desperation.
+
+In one of these she saw a porter bestowing hand-luggage. She appealed
+to him. "You must have one chair left."
+
+He was hardly polite in his answer. "No, ma'am, I ain't. I ain't a
+single chair."
+
+"But I've got to sit somewhere," she said.
+
+The porter did not comment on such a patent fallacy. He moved back to
+the front to repel boarders. Several men stared from the depths of
+their dentist's chairs, but made no proffer of their seats. They
+believed that woman's newfangled equality included the privilege of
+standing up.
+
+One man, however, gave a start as of recognition, real or pretended.
+Marie Louise did not know him, and said so with her eyes. His smile of
+recognition changed to a smile of courtesy. He proffered her his seat
+with an old-fashioned gesture. She declined with a shake of the head
+and a coldly correct smile.
+
+He insisted academically, as much as to say: "I can see that you are a
+gentlewoman. Please accept me as a gentleman and permit me to do my
+duty." There was a brief, silent tug-of-war between his unselfishness
+and hers. He won. Before she realized it, she had dropped wearily into
+his place.
+
+"But where will you sit?" she said.
+
+"Oh, I'll get along."
+
+He smiled and moved off, lugging his suit-case. He had the air of one
+who would get along. He had shown himself masterful in two combats,
+and compelled her to take the chair he had doubtless engaged with
+futile providence days before.
+
+"Rahthah a decentish chap, with a will of his own," she thought.
+
+The train started, left the station twilight, plunged into the tunnel
+of gloom and made the dip under the Hudson River. People felt their
+ears buzz and smother. Wise ones swallowed hard. The train came back
+to the surface and the sunlight, and ran across New Jersey.
+
+Marie Louise decided to take her luncheon early, to make sure of it.
+Nearly everybody else had decided to do the same thing. At this time
+all the people in America seemed to be thinking _en masse_. When she
+reached the dining-car every seat was taken and there was a long
+bread-line in the narrow corridor.
+
+The wilful man was at the head. He fished for her eye, caught it, and
+motioned to her to take his place. She shook her head. But it seemed
+to do no good to shake heads at him; he came down the corridor and
+lifted his hat. His voice and words were pleading, but his tone was
+imperative.
+
+"Please take my place."
+
+She shook her head, but he still held his hand out, pointing. She was
+angry at being bossed even for her own benefit. Worse yet, by the time
+she got to the head of the line the second man had moved up to first.
+He stared at her as if he wondered what she was doing there. She fell
+back, doubly vexed, but That Man advanced and gave the interloper a
+look like a policeman's shove. The fellow backed up on the next man's
+toes. Then the cavalier smiled Miss Webling to her place and went back
+to the foot of the class without waiting for her furious thanks.
+
+She wanted to stamp her foot. She had always hated to be cowed or
+compelled to take chairs or money. People who had tried to move her
+soul or lend her their experience or their advantages had always
+aroused resentment.
+
+Before long she had a seat. The man opposite her was just thumbing his
+last morsel of pie. She supposed that when he left That Man would take
+the chair and order her luncheon for her. But it was not so to be. She
+passed him still well down the line. He had probably given his place
+to other women in succession. She did not like that. It seemed a
+trifle unfaithful or promiscuous or something. The rescuer owes the
+rescuee a certain fidelity. He did not look at her. He did not claim
+even a glance of gratitude.
+
+It was so American a gallantry that she resented it. If he had seemed
+to ask for the alms of a smile, she would have insulted him. Yet it
+was not altogether satisfactory to be denied the privilege. She fumed.
+Everything was wrong. She sat in her cuckoo's nest and glared at the
+reeling landscape.
+
+Suddenly she began pawing through that private chaos, looking for
+Polly Widdicombe's letter. She could not find it. She found the checks
+for her trunks, a handkerchief, a pair of gloves, and various other
+things, but not the letter. This gave her a new fright.
+
+She remembered now that she had left it on the telephone-table. She
+could see it plainly as her remembered glance took its last survey of
+the room. The brain has a way of developing occasional photographs
+very slowly. Something strikes our eyes, and we do not really see it
+till long after. We hear words and say, "How's that?" or, "I beg your
+pardon!" and hear them again before they can be repeated.
+
+This belated feat of memory encouraged Miss Webling to hope that she
+could remember a little farther back to the contents of the letter and
+the telephone number written there. But her memory would not respond.
+The effort to cudgel it seemed to confuse it. She kept on forgetting
+more and more completely.
+
+All she could remember was what Polly Widdicombe had said about there
+being no chance to get into a hotel--"an hôtel," Marie Louise still
+thought it.
+
+It grew more and more evident that the train would be hours late.
+People began to worry audibly about the hotels that would probably
+refuse them admission. At length they began to stroll toward the
+dining-car for an early dinner.
+
+Marie Louise, to make sure of the meal and for lack of other
+employment, went along. There was no queue in the corridor now. She
+did not have to take That Man's place. She found one at a little empty
+table. But by and by he appeared, and, though there were other vacant
+seats, he sat down opposite her.
+
+She could hardly order the conductor to eject him. In fact, seeing
+that she owed him for her seat-- It suddenly smote her that he must
+have paid for it. She owed him money! This was unendurable!
+
+He made no attempt to speak to her, but at length she found courage to
+speak to him.
+
+"I beg your pardon--"
+
+He looked up and about for the salt or something to pass, but she went
+on:
+
+"May I ask you how much you paid for the seat you gave me?"
+
+He laughed outright at this unexpected demand:
+
+"Why, I don't remember, I'm sure."
+
+"Oh, but you must, and you must let me repay it. It just occurred to
+me that I had cheated you out of your chair, and your money, too."
+
+"That's mighty kind of you," he said.
+
+He laughed again, but rather tenderly, and she was grateful to him for
+having the tact not to be flamboyant about it and not insisting on
+forgetting it.
+
+"I'll remember just how much it was in a minute, and if you will feel
+easier about it, I'll ask you for it."
+
+"I could hardly rob a perfect stranger," she began.
+
+He broke in: "They say nobody is perfect, and I'm not a perfect
+stranger. I've met you before, Miss Webling."
+
+"Not rilly! Wherever was it? I'm so stupid not to remember--even your
+name."
+
+He rather liked her for not bluffing it through. He could understand
+her haziness the better from the fact that when he first saw her in
+the chair-car and leaped to his feet it was because he had identified
+her once more with the long-lost, long-sought beauty of years long
+gone--the girl he had seen in the cheap vaudeville theater. This slip
+of memory had uncovered another memory. He had corrected the
+palimpsest and recalled her as the Miss Webling whom he had met in
+London. She had given him the same start then as now, and, as he
+recalled it, she had snubbed him rather vigorously. So he had kept his
+distance. But the proffer of the money for the chair-car chair broke
+the ice a little. He said at last:
+
+"My name is Ross Davidge. I met you at your father's house in
+London."
+
+This seemed to agitate her peculiarly. She trembled and gasped:
+
+"You don't mean it. I-- Oh yes, of course I remember--"
+
+"Please don't lie about it," he pleaded, bluntly, "for of course you
+don't."
+
+She laughed, but very nervously.
+
+"Well, we did give very large dinners."
+
+"It was a very large one the night I was there. I was a mile down the
+street from you, and I said nothing immortal. I was only a business
+acquaintance of Sir Joseph's, anyway. It was about ships, of course."
+
+He saw that her mind was far away and under strange excitation. But
+she murmured, distantly:
+
+"Oh, so you are--interested in ships?"
+
+"I make 'em for a living."
+
+"Rilly! How interesting!"
+
+This constraint was irksome. He ventured:
+
+"How is the old boy? Sir Joseph, I mean. He's well, I hope."
+
+Her eyes widened. "Didn't you know? Didn't you read in the papers--about
+their death together?"
+
+"Theirs? His wife and he died together?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"In a submarine attack?"
+
+"No, at home. It was in all the papers--about their dying on the same
+night, from--from ptomaine poisoning."
+
+"No!"
+
+He put a vast amount of shock and regret in the mumbled word. He
+explained: "I must have been out in the forest or in the mines at the
+time. Forgive me for opening the old wound. How long ago was it? I see
+you're out of mourning."
+
+"Sir Joseph abominated black; and besides, few people wear mourning in
+England during the war."
+
+"That's so. Poor old England! You poor Englishwomen--mothers and
+daughters! My God! what you've gone through! And such pluck!"
+
+Before he realized what he was doing his hand went across and touched
+hers, and he clenched it for just a moment of fierce sympathy. She did
+not resent the message. Then he muttered:
+
+"I know what it means. I lost my father and mother--not at once, of
+course--years apart. But to lose them both in one night!"
+
+She made a sharp attempt at self-control:
+
+"Please! I beg you--please don't speak of it."
+
+He was so sorry that he said nothing more. Marie Louise was doubly
+fascinating to him because she was in sorrow and afraid of something
+or somebody. Besides, she was inaccessible, and Ross Davidge always
+felt a challenge from the impossible and the inaccessible.
+
+She called for her check and paid it, and tipped the waiter and rose.
+She smiled wretchedly at him as he rose with her. She left the
+dining-car, and he sat down and cursed himself for a brute and a
+blunderer.
+
+He kept in the offing, so that if she wanted him she could call him,
+but he thought it the politer politeness not to italicize his
+chivalry. He was so distressed that he forgot that she had forgotten
+to pay him for the chair.
+
+It was good and dark when the train pulled into Washington at last.
+The dark gave Marie Louise another reason for dismay. The appearance
+of a man who had dined at Sir Joseph's, and the necessity for telling
+him the lie about that death, had brought on a crisis of nerves. She
+was afraid of the dark, but more afraid of the man who might ask
+still more questions. She avoided him purposely when she left the
+train.
+
+A porter took her hand-baggage and led her to the taxi-stand. Polly
+Widdicombe's car was not waiting. Marie Louise went to the front of
+the building to see if she might be there. She was appalled at the
+thought of Polly's not meeting her. She needed her blessed giggle as
+never before.
+
+It was a very majestic station. Marie Louise had heard people say that
+it was much too majestic for a railroad station. As if America did not
+owe more to the iron god of the rails than to any of her other
+deities!
+
+Before her was the Capitol, lighted from below, its dome floating
+cloudily above the white parapets as if mystically sustained. The
+superb beauty of it clutched her throat. She wanted to do something
+for it and all the holy ideals it symbolized.
+
+Evidently Polly was not coming. The telegram had probably never
+reached her. The porter asked her, "Was you thinkin' of a taxi?" and
+she said, "Yes," only to realize that she had no address to give the
+driver.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+IN WASHINGTON
+
+[Illustration: "'It's beautiful overhead if you're going that way,'"
+Davidge quoted. He set out briskly, but Marie Louise hung back. "Aren't
+you afraid to push on when you can't see where you're going?" she
+demanded.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+She went through her hand-bag again, while the porter computed how
+many tips he was missing and the cab-starter looked insufferable
+things about womankind.
+
+She asked if any of them knew where Grinden Hall might be, but they
+shook their heads. She had a sudden happy idea. She would ask the
+telephone Information for the number. She hurried to a booth, followed
+by the despondent porter. She asked for Information and got her, but
+that was all.
+
+"Please give me the numba of Mrs. Widdicombe's, in Rosslyn."
+
+A Washington dialect eventually told her that the number was a private
+wire and could not be given.
+
+Marie Louise implored a special dispensation, but it was against the
+rules.
+
+She asked for the supervisor--who was equally sorry and adamant. Marie
+Louise left the booth in utter defeat. There was nothing to do but go
+to a hotel till the morrow.
+
+She recalled the stories of the hopelessness of getting a room. Yet
+she had no choice but to make the try. She had got a seat on the train
+where there were none. Perhaps she could trust her luck to provide her
+with a lodging, too.
+
+"We'll go back to the taxi-stand," she told the porter.
+
+He did not conceal his joy at being rid of her.
+
+She tried the Shoreham first, and when the taxicab deposited her under
+the umbrellas of the big trees and she climbed the homelike steps to a
+lobby with the air of a living-room she felt welcome and secure.
+Brilliant clusters were drifting to dinner, and the men were more
+picturesque than the women, for many of them were in uniform. Officers
+of the army and navy of the United States and of Great Britain and of
+France gave the throng the look of a costume-party.
+
+There was a less interesting crowd at the desk, and now nobody offered
+her his place at the head of the line. It would have done no good, for
+the room-clerk was shaking his head to all the suppliants. Marie
+Louise saw women turned away, married couples, men alone. But
+new-comers pressed forward and kept trying to convince the deskman
+that he had rooms somewhere, rooms that he had forgotten, or was
+saving for people who would never arrive.
+
+He stood there shaking his head like a toy in a window. People tried
+to get past him in all the ways people try to get through life, in the
+ways that Saint Peter must grow very tired of at the gate of
+heaven--bluff, whine, bribery, intimidation, flirtation.
+
+Some demanded their rights with full confidence and would not take no
+for answer. Some pleaded with hopelessness in advance; they were used
+to rebuffs. They appealed to his pity. Some tried corruption; they
+whispered that they would "make it all right," or they managed a sly
+display of money--one a one-dollar bill with the "1" folded in,
+another a fifty-dollar bill with the "50" well to the fore. Some grew
+ugly and implied favoritism; they were the born strikers and
+anarchists. Even though they looked rich, they had that habit of
+finding oppression and conspiracy everywhere. A few women appealed to
+his philanthropy, and a few others tried to play the siren. But his
+head oscillated from side to side, and nobody could swing it up and
+down.
+
+Marie Louise watched the procession anxiously. There seemed to be no
+end to it. The people who had come here first had been turned away
+into outer darkness long ago and had gone to other hotels. The present
+wretches were those who had gone to the other hotels first and made
+this their second, third, or sixth choice.
+
+Marie Louise did not go to the desk. She could take a hint at second
+hand. She would have been glad of a place to sit down, but all the
+divans were filled with gossipers very much at home and somewhat
+contemptuous of the vulgar herd trying to break into their select and
+long-established circle. She heard a man saying, with amiable anger:
+"Ah'm mahty sah'y Ah can't put you up at ouah haouse, but we've got
+'em hangin' on the hat-rack in the hall. You infunnal patriots have
+simply ruined this little old taown."
+
+She heard a pleasant laugh. "Don't worry. I'll get along somehow."
+
+She glanced aside and saw That Man again. She had forgotten his name
+again; yet she felt curiously less lonely, not nearly so hopeless. The
+other man said:
+
+"Say, Davidge, are you daown heah looking for one of these dollah-a-yeah
+jobs? Can you earn it?"
+
+"I'm not looking for a job. I'm looking for a bed."
+
+"Not a chance. The government's taken ovah half the hotels for
+office-buildings."
+
+"I'll go to a Turkish bath, then."
+
+"Good Lawd! man, I hud a man propose that, and the hotel clerk said he
+had telephoned the Tukkish bath, and a man theah said: 'For God's sake
+don't send anybody else heah! We've got five hundred cots full
+naow.'"
+
+"There's Baltimore."
+
+"Baltimer's full up. So's Alexandra. Go on back home and write a
+letta."
+
+"I'll try a few more hotels first."
+
+"No use--not an openin'."
+
+"Well, I've usually found that the best place to look for things is
+where people say they don't grow."
+
+Marie Louise thought that this was most excellent advice. She decided
+to follow it and keep on trying.
+
+As she was about to move toward the door the elevator, like a great
+cornucopia, spilled a bevy of men and women into the lobby. Leading
+them all came a woman of charm, of distinction, of self-possession.
+She was smiling over one handsome shoulder at a British officer.
+
+The forlorn Marie Louise saw her, and her eyes rejoiced; her face was
+kindled with haven-beacons. She pressed forward with her hand out, and
+though she only murmured the words, a cry of relief thrilled them.
+
+"Lady Clifton-Wyatt! What luck to find you!"
+
+Lady Clifton-Wyatt turned with a smile of welcome in advance. Her hand
+went forward. Her smile ended suddenly. Blank amazement passed into
+contemptuous wrath. Her hand went back. With the disgust of a sick
+eagle in a zoo, she drew a film over her eyes.
+
+The smile on Marie Louise's face also hung unsupported for a moment.
+It faded, then rallied. She spoke with patience, underlining the words
+with an affectionate reproof:
+
+"My dear Lady Clifton-Wyatt, I am Miss Webling--Marie Louise. Don't
+you know me?"
+
+Lady Clifton-Wyatt answered: "I did. But I don't!"
+
+Then she turned and moved toward the dining-room door.
+
+The head waiter bowed with deference and command and beckoned Lady
+Clifton-Wyatt. She obeyed him with meek hauteur.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+As she came out of the first hotel of her selection and rejection
+Marie Louise asked the car-starter the name of another. He mentioned
+the New Willard.
+
+It was not far, and she was there before she had time to recover from
+the staggering effect of Lady Clifton-Wyatt's bludgeon-like snub. As
+timidly as the waif and estray that she was, she ventured into the
+crowded, gorgeous lobby with its lofty and ornate ceiling on its big
+columns. At one side a long corridor ran brokenly up a steep hill. It
+was populous with loungers who had just finished their dinners or were
+waiting for a chance to get into the dining-rooms. Orchestra music was
+lilting down the aisle.
+
+When Marie Louise had threaded the crowd and reached the desk a very
+polite and eager clerk asked her if she had a reservation. He seemed
+to be as regretful as she when she said no. He sighed, "We've turned
+away a hundred people in the last two hours."
+
+She accepted her dismissal dumbly, then paused to ask, "I say, do you
+by any chance know where Grinden Hall is?"
+
+He shook his head and turned to another clerk to ask, "Do you know of
+a hotel here named Grinden Hall?"
+
+The other shook his head, too. There was a vast amount of head-shaking
+going on everywhere in Washington. He added, "I'm new here." Nearly
+everybody seemed to be new here. It seemed as if the entire populace
+had moved into a ready-made town.
+
+Marie Louise had barely the strength to explain, "Grinden Hall is not
+an hotel; it is a home, in Rosslyn, wherever that is."
+
+"Oh, Rosslyn--that's across the river in Virginia."
+
+"Do you know, by any chance, Major Thomas Widdicombe?"
+
+He shook his head. Major Widdicombe was a big man, but the town was
+fairly swarming with men bigger than he. There were shoals of
+magnates, but giants in their own communities were petty nuisances
+here pleading with room-clerks for cots and with head waiters for
+bread. The lobby was a thicket of prominent men set about like trees.
+Several of them had the Congressional look. Later history would record
+them as the historic statesmen of titanic debates, men by whose
+eloquence and leadership and committee-room toil the Republic would be
+revolutionized in nearly every detail, and billions made to flow like
+water.
+
+As Marie Louise collected her porter and her hand-luggage for her next
+exit she saw Ross Davidge just coming in. She stepped behind a large
+politician or something. She forgot that she owed Davidge money, and
+she felt a rather pleasurable agitation in this game of hide-and-seek,
+but something made her shy of Davidge. For one thing, it was ludicrous
+to be caught being turned out of a second hotel.
+
+The politician walked away, and Davidge would have seen Marie Louise
+if he had not stopped short and turned a cold shoulder on her, just as
+the distant orchestra, which had been crooning one of Jerome Kern's
+most insidiously ingratiating melodies, began to blare with all its
+might the sonorities of "The Star-spangled Banner."
+
+Miss Webling saw the people in the alley getting to their feet slowly,
+awkwardly. A number of army and navy officers faced the music and
+stood rigid at attention. The civilians in the lobby who were already
+standing began to pull their hats off sheepishly like embarrassed
+peasants. People were still as self-conscious as if the song had just
+been written. They would soon learn to feel the tremendous importance
+of that eternal query, the only national anthem, perhaps, that ever
+began with a question and ended with a prayer. Americans would soon
+learn to salute it with eagerness and to deal ferociously with
+men--and women, too--who were slow to rise.
+
+Marie Louise watched Davidge curiously. He was manifestly on fire with
+patriotism, but he was ashamed to show it, ashamed to stand erect and
+click his heels. He fumbled his hat and slouched, and looked as if he
+had been caught in some guilt. He was indeed guilty of a childish
+fervor. He wanted to shout, he wanted to weep, he wanted to fight
+somebody; but he did not know how to express himself without striking
+an attitude, and he was incapable of being a _poseur_--except as an
+American posily affects poselessness.
+
+When the anthem ended, people sank into their chairs with sighs of
+relief; the officers sharply relaxed; the civilians straightened up
+and felt at home again. Ross Davidge marched to the desk, not noticing
+Marie Louise, who motioned to her porter to come along with her
+luggage and went to hunt shelter at the Raleigh Hotel. She kept her
+taxi now and left her hand-baggage in it while she received the
+inevitable rebuff. From there she traveled to hotel after hotel,
+marching in with the dismal assurance that she would march right out
+again.
+
+The taxi-driver was willing to take her to hotels as long as they and
+her money lasted. Her strength and her patience gave out first. At the
+Lafayette she advanced wearily, disconsolately to the desk. She saw
+Ross Davidge stretched out in a big chair. He did not see her. His hat
+was pulled over his eyes, and he had the air of angry failure. If he
+despaired, what chance had she?
+
+She received the usual regrets from the clerk. As she left the desk
+the floor began to wabble. She hurried to an inviting divan and
+dropped down, beaten and distraught. She heard some one approach, and
+her downcast eyes saw a pair of feet move up and halt before her.
+
+Since Lady Clifton-Wyatt's searing glance and words Marie Louise had
+felt branded visibly, and unworthy of human kindness and shelter. She
+was piteously grateful to this man for his condescension in saying:
+
+"You'll have to excuse me for bothering you again. But I'm afraid
+you're in worse trouble than I am. Nobody seems to be willing to take
+you in."
+
+He meant this as a light jocularity, but it gave her a moment's
+serious fear that he had overheard Lady Clifton-Wyatt's slashing
+remark. But he went on:
+
+"Won't you allow me to try to find you a place? Don't you know anybody
+here?"
+
+"I know numbers of people, but I don't know where any of them are."
+
+She told him of her efforts to get to Rosslyn by telephone, by
+telegraph, by train or taxicab. Little tears added a sparkle to
+laughter, but threatened rain. She ended with, "And now that I've
+unloaded my riddles on you, aren't you sorry you spoke?"
+
+"Not yet," he said, with a subtle compliment pleasantly implying that
+she was perilous. Everybody likes to be thought perilous. He went on:
+"I don't know Rosslyn, but it can't be much of a place for size. If
+you have a friend there, we'll find her if we have to go to every
+house in Rosslyn."
+
+"But it's getting rather late, isn't it, to be knocking at all the
+doors all by myself?"
+
+She had not meant to hint, and it was a mere coincidence that he
+thought to say:
+
+"Couldn't I go along?"
+
+"Thank you, but it's out in the country rather far, I'm afraid."
+
+"Then I must go along."
+
+"I couldn't think of troubling you."
+
+The end of it was that he had his way, or she hers, or both theirs. He
+made no nonsense of adventure or escapade about it, and she was too
+well used to traveling alone to feel ashamed or alarmed. He led her to
+the taxi, told the driver that Grinden Hall was their objective and
+must be found. Then he climbed in with her, and they rode in a dark
+broken with the fitful lightnings of street-lamps and motors.
+
+The taxi glided out M Street. The little shops of Georgetown went
+sidelong by. The cab turned abruptly to the left and clattered across
+the old aqueduct bridge. On a broad reach of the Potomac the new-risen
+moon spread a vast sheet of tin-foil of a crinkled sheen. This was all
+that was beautiful about the sordid neighborhood, but it was very
+beautiful, and tender to a strange degree.
+
+Once across, the driver stopped and leaned round to call in at the
+door:
+
+"This is Rosslyn. Where do yew-all want to go next?"
+
+"Grinden Hall. Ask somebody."
+
+"Ask who? They ain't a soul tew be saw."
+
+They waited in the dark awhile; then Davidge got out and, seeing a
+street-car coming down through the hills like a dragon in fiery
+scales, he stopped it to ask the motorman of Grinden Hall. He knew
+nothing, but a sleepy passenger said that he reckoned that that
+was the fancy name of Mr. Sawtell's place, and he shouted the
+directions:
+
+"Yew go raht along this road ovah the caw tracks, and unda a bridge
+and keep a-goin' up a ridge and ova till yew come to a shawp tu'n to
+the raht. Big whaht mansion, ain't it?"
+
+"I don't know," said Davidge. "I never saw it."
+
+"Well, I reckon that's the place. Only 'Hall' I knaow about up heah."
+
+The motorman kicked his bell and started off.
+
+"Nothing like trying," said Davidge, and clambered in. The taxicab
+went veering and yawing over an unusually Virginian bad road. After a
+little they entered a forest. The driver threw on his search-light,
+and it tore from the darkness pictures of forest eerily green in the
+glare--old trees slanting out, deep channels blackening into
+mysterious glades. The car swung sharply to the right and growled up a
+hill, curving and swirling and threatening to capsize at every moment.
+The sense of being lost was irresistible.
+
+Marie Louise fell to pondering; suddenly she grew afraid to find
+Grinden Hall. She knew that Polly knew Lady Clifton-Wyatt. They might
+have met since Polly wrote that letter. Lady Clifton-Wyatt had
+perhaps--had doubtless--told Polly all about Marie Louise. Polly would
+probably refuse her shelter. She knew Polly: there was no middle
+ground between her likes and dislikes; she doted or she hated. She was
+capable of smothering her friends with affection and of making them
+ancient enemies in an instant. For her enemies she had no use or
+tolerance. She let them know her wrath.
+
+The car stopped. The driver got down and went forward to a narrow lane
+opening from the narrow road. There was a sign-board there. He read it
+by the light of the moon and a few matches. He came back and said:
+
+"Here she is. Grinden Hall is what she says on that theah sign-bode."
+
+Marie Louise was in a flutter. "What time is it?" she asked.
+
+Davidge held his watch up and lighted a match.
+
+"A little after one."
+
+"It's awfully late," she said.
+
+The car was turning at right angles now, and following a narrow track
+curling through a lawn studded with shrubbery. There was a moment's
+view of all Washington beyond the valley of the moon-illumined river.
+Its lights gleamed in a patient vigilance. It had the look of the holy
+city that it is. The Capitol was like a mosque in Mecca, the Mecca of
+the faithful who believe in freedom and equality. The Washington
+Monument, picked out from the dark by a search-light, was a lofty
+steeple in a dream-world.
+
+Davidge caught a quick breath of piety and reverence. Marie Louise was
+too frightened by her own destiny to think of the world's anxieties.
+
+The car raced round the circular road. Her eyes were snatched from the
+drowsy town, small with distance, to the imminent majesty of a great
+Colonial portico with columns tall and stately and white, a temple of
+Parthenonian dignity in the radiance of the priestly moon. There was
+not a light in any window, no sign of life.
+
+The car stopped. But-- Marie Louise simply dared not face Polly and
+risk a scene in the presence of Davidge. She tapped on the glass and
+motioned the driver to go on. He could not believe her gestures. She
+leaned out and whispered:
+
+"Go on--go on! I'll not stop!"
+
+Davidge was puzzled, but he said nothing; and Marie Louise made no
+explanation till they were outside again, and then she said:
+
+"Do you think I'm insane?"
+
+"This is not my party," he said.
+
+She tried to explain: "There wasn't a light to be seen. They couldn't
+have got my telegram. They weren't expecting me. They may not have
+been at home. I hadn't the courage to stop and wake the house."
+
+That was not her real reason, but Davidge asked for no other. If he
+noted that she was strangely excited over a trifle like getting a few
+servants and a hostess out of bed, he made no comment.
+
+When she pleaded, "Do you mind if I go back to Washington with you?"
+he chuckled: "It's certainly better than going alone. But what will
+you do when you get there?"
+
+"I'll go to the railroad station and sit up," Marie Louise announced.
+"I'm no end sorry to have been such a nuisance."
+
+"Nuisance!" he protested, and left his intonation to convey all the
+compliments he dared not utter.
+
+The cab dived into another woods and ran clattering down a roving
+hill road. Up the opposite steep it went with a weary gait. It crawled
+to the top with turtle-like labor. Davidge knew the symptoms, and he
+frowned in the shadow, yet smiled a little.
+
+The car went banging down, held by a squealing brake. The light grew
+faint, and in the glimmer there was a close shave at the edge of a
+hazardous bridge over a deep, deep ravine. The cab rolled forward on
+the rough planks under its impetus, but it picked up no speed.
+Half-way across, it stopped.
+
+"Whatever is the matter?" Marie Louise exclaimed.
+
+Davidge leaned out and called to the driver, "What's the matter now?"
+though he knew full well.
+
+"Gas is gone, I reckon," the fellow snarled, as he got down. After a
+moment's examination he confirmed his diagnosis. "Yep, gas is all
+gone. I been on the go too long on this one call."
+
+"In Heaven's name, where can you get some more gasolene?" said Marie
+Louise.
+
+"Nearest garodge is at Rosslyn, I reckon, lady."
+
+"How far is that?"
+
+"I'd hate to say, lady. Three, fo' mahls, most lahkly, and prob'ly
+closed naow."
+
+"Go wake it up at once."
+
+"No thanky, lady. I got mahty po' feet for them hills."
+
+"What do you propose to do?"
+
+"Ain't nothin' tew dew but wait fo' somebody to come along."
+
+"When will that be?"
+
+"Along todes mawnin' they ought to be somebody along, milkman or
+somethin'."
+
+"Cheerful!" said Marie Louise.
+
+"Batt'ries kind o' sick, tew, looks lahk. I was engaged by the houah,
+remember," the driver reminded them as he clambered back to his place,
+put his feet up on the dashboard and let his head roll into a position
+of ease.
+
+The dimming lights waned and did not wax. By and by they went where
+lights go when they go out. There was no light now except the moonset,
+shimmering mistily across the tree-tops of the rotunda of the forest,
+just enough to emphasize the black of the well they were in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+How would she take it?
+
+That was what interested Davidge most. What was she really like? And
+what would she do with this intractable situation? What would the
+situation do with her? For situations make people as well as people
+situations.
+
+Now was the time for an acquaintance of souls. An almost absolute dark
+erased them from each other's sight. Their eyes were as useless as the
+useless eyes of fish in subterrene caverns. Miss Webling could have
+told Davidge the color of his eyes, of course, being a woman. But
+being a man, he could not remember the color of hers, because he had
+noted nothing about her eyes except that they were very eye-ish.
+
+He would have blundered ridiculously in describing her appearance. His
+information of her character was all to gain. He had seen her
+wandering about Washington homeless among the crowds and turned from
+every door. She had borne the ordeal as well as could be asked. She
+had accepted his proffer of protection with neither terror nor
+assurance.
+
+He supposed that in a similar plight the old-fashioned woman--or at
+least the ubiquitous woman of the special eternal type that
+fictionists call "old-fashioned"--would have been either a bleating,
+tremulous gazelle or a brazen siren. But Miss Webling behaved like
+neither of these. She took his gallantry with a matter-of-fact
+reasonableness, much as a man would accept the offer of another man's
+companionship on a tiresome journey. She gave none of those
+multitudinous little signals by which a woman indicates that she is
+either afraid that a man will try to hug her or afraid that he will
+not. She was apparently planning neither to flirt nor to faint.
+
+Davidge asked in a matter-of-fact tone: "Do you think you could walk
+to town? The driver says it's only three-fo' miles."
+
+She sighed: "My feet would never make it. And I have on high-heeled
+boots."
+
+His "Too bad!" conveyed more sympathy than she expected. He had
+another suggestion.
+
+"You could probably get back to the home of Mrs. Widdicombe. That
+isn't so far away."
+
+She answered, bluntly, "I shouldn't think of it!"
+
+He made another proposal without much enthusiasm.
+
+"Then I'd better walk in to Washington and get a cab and come back for
+you."
+
+She was even blunter about this: "I shouldn't dream of that. You're a
+wreck, too."
+
+He lied pluckily, "Oh, I shouldn't mind."
+
+"Well, I should! And I don't fancy the thought of staying here alone
+with that driver."
+
+He smiled in the dark at the double-edged compliment of implying that
+she was safer with him than with the driver. But she did not hear his
+smile.
+
+She apologized, meekly: "I've got you into an awful mess, haven't I? I
+usually do make a mess of everything I undertake. You'd better beware
+of me after this."
+
+His "I'll risk it" was a whole cyclopedia of condensed gallantry.
+
+They sat inept for a time, thinking aimlessly, seeing nothing, hearing
+only the bated breath of the night wind groping stealthily through the
+tree-tops, and from far beneath, the still, small voice of a brook
+feeling its way down its unlighted stairs.
+
+At last her voice murmured, "Are you quite too horribly uncomfortable
+for words?"
+
+His voice was a deep-toned bell somehow articulate: "I couldn't be
+more comfortable except for one thing. I'm all out of cigars."
+
+"Oh!" He had a vague sense of her mental struggle before she spoke
+again, timidly:
+
+"I fancy you don't smoke cigarettes?"
+
+"When I can't get cigars; any tobacco is better than none."
+
+Another blank of troubled silence, then, "I wonder if you'd say that
+of mine."
+
+Her voice was both defiant and trepidate. He laughed. "I'll guarantee
+to."
+
+A few years before he would have accepted a woman's confession that
+she smoked cigarettes as a confession of complete abandonment to all
+the other vices. A few years farther back, indeed, and he would have
+said that any man who smoked cigarettes was worthless. Since then he
+had seen so many burly heroes and so many unimpeachable ladies smoke
+them that he had almost forgotten his old prejudice. In some of the
+United States it was then against the law for men (not to say women
+and children) to sell or give away or even to possess cigarettes.
+After the war crusades would start against all forms of tobacco, and
+at least one clergyman would call every man who smoked cigarettes a
+"drug-addict." It is impossible for anybody to be moral enough not to
+be immoral to somebody.
+
+But intolerances go out of style as suddenly as new creeds come in. He
+knew soldiers who held a lighted stub in one hand while they rolled a
+cigarette with the other. He knew Red Cross saints who could puff a
+forbidden cigarette like a prayer. He wondered how he or any one had
+ever made such a fierce taboo of a wisp of aromatic leaves kindled in
+a tiny parcel. Such strange things people choose for their tests of
+virtue--tests that have nothing whatever to do with the case, whether
+savage or civilized folk invent them.
+
+He heard Miss Webling fumbling in a hand-bag. He heard the click of
+her rings against metal. He heard the little noise of the portals of a
+cigarette-case opening. His hands and hers stumbled together, and his
+fingers selected a little cylinder from the row.
+
+He produced a match and held the flame before her. He filled his eyes
+with her vivid features as the glow detached her from the dark. Of her
+eyes he saw only the big lids, but he noted her lips, pursed a trifle
+with the kissing muscles, and he sighed as she blew a smoke about her
+like a goddess creating a cloud of vanishment. He lighted his own
+cigarette and threw the match away. They returned to a perfect gloom
+mitigated by the slight increase and decrease in the vividness of
+their tobacco-tips as they puffed.
+
+She was the first to speak:
+
+"I have a whole box of fags in my hand-bag. I usually have a good
+supply. When you want another-- Does it horrify you to see a woman
+smoke?"
+
+He was very superior to his old bigotry. "Quite the contrary!"
+
+This was hardly honest enough, so he said:
+
+"It did once, though. I remember how startled I was years ago when I
+was in England and I saw ladies smoking in hotel corridors; and on the
+steamer coming back, there was a countess or something who sat in the
+balcony and puffed away. Of course, at the big dinners in London they
+smoked, too. They did at Sir Joseph's, I remember."
+
+He did not see her wince at this name.
+
+"There were some odd fish surrounding old Sir Joseph. Some of them I
+couldn't quite make out. He was just a little hard to get at, himself.
+I got very huffy at the old boy once or twice, I'm sorry to say. It
+was about ships. I'm a crank on ships. Everybody has at least one
+mania. That's mine--ships. Sir Joseph and I quarreled about them. He
+wanted to buy all I could make, but he was in no hurry to have 'em
+finished. I told him he talked more like a German trying to stop
+production than like a Britisher trying to speed it up. That made him
+huffy. I'm sorry I did him such an injustice. When you insult a man,
+and he dies--What a terrible repartee dying is! He had offered me a
+big price, too, but it's not money I want to make; it's ships. And I
+want to see 'em at work. Did you ever see a ship launched?"
+
+"No, I never did."
+
+"There's nothing prettier. Come over to my shipyard and I'll show you.
+We're going to put one over before long. I'll let you christen her."
+
+"That would be wonderful."
+
+"It's better than that. The civilized world is starting out on the
+most poetic job it ever undertook."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Yep. The German sharks are gradually dragging all our shipping under
+water. The inventors don't seem able to devise any cure for the
+submarines except to find 'em and fight 'em. They're hard to find, and
+they won't fight. But they keep popping up and stabbing our pretty
+ships to death. And now the great game is on, the greatest game that
+civilized men ever fought with hell."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"We're going to try to build ships faster than the Hun can sink 'em.
+Isn't that a glorious job for you? Was there ever a--well, a nobler
+idea? We can't kill the beast; so we're going to choke him to death
+with food." He laughed to hide his embarrassing exaltation.
+
+She was not afraid of it: "It is rather a stupendous inspiration,
+isn't it?"
+
+"Who was it said he'd rather have written Gray's 'Elegy' than taken
+Quebec? I'd rather have thought up this thought than written the
+Iliad. Nobody knows who invented the idea. He's gone to oblivion
+already, but he has done more for the salvation of freedom than all
+the poets of time."
+
+This shocked her, yet thrilled her with its loftiness. She thrilled to
+him suddenly, too. She saw that she was within the aura of a fiery
+spirit--a business man aflame. And she saw in a white light that the
+builders of things, even of perishable things, are as great as the
+weavers of immortal words--not so well remembered, of course, for
+posterity has only the words. Poets and highbrows scorn them, but
+living women who can see the living men are not so foolish. They are
+apt to prefer the maker to the writer. They reward the poet with a
+smile and a compliment, but give their lives to the manufacturers, the
+machinists, the merchants. Then the neglected poets and their toadies
+the critics grow sarcastic about this and think that they have
+condemned women for materialism when they are themselves blind to its
+grandeur. They ignore the divinity that attends the mining and
+smelting and welding and selling of iron things, the hewing and sawing
+and planing of woods, the sowing and reaping and distribution of
+foods. They make a priestcraft and a ritual of artful language, and
+are ignorant of their own heresy. But since they deal in words, they
+have a fearful advantage and use it for their own glorification, as
+priests are wont to do.
+
+Marie Louise had a vague insight into the truth, but was not aware of
+her own wisdom. She knew only that this Davidge who had made himself
+her gallant, her messenger and servant, was really a genius, a giant.
+She felt that the rôles should be reversed and she should be waiting
+upon him.
+
+In Sir Joseph's house there had been a bit of statuary representing
+Hercules and Omphale. The mighty one was wearing the woman's kirtle
+and carrying her distaff, and the girl was staggering under the
+lion-skin and leaning on the bludgeon. Marie Louise always hated the
+group. It seemed to her to represent just the way so many women tried
+to master the men they infatuated. But Marie Louise despised
+masterable men, and she had no wish to make a toy of one. Yet she had
+wondered if a man and a woman could not love each other more perfectly
+if neither were master or mistress, but both on a parity--a team,
+indeed.
+
+Davidge enjoyed talking to her, at least. That comforted her. When she
+came back from her meditations he was saying:
+
+"My company is reaching out. We've bought a big tract of swamp, and
+we're filling it in and clearing it, and we're going to lay out a
+shipyard there and turn out ships--standardized ships--as fast as we
+can. We're steadying the ground first, sinking concrete piles in steel
+casing--if you put 'em end to end, they'd reach twenty-five miles.
+They're just to hold the ground together. That's what the whole
+country has got to do before it can really begin to begin--put some
+solid ground under its feet. When the ship is launched she mustn't
+stick on the ways or in the mud.
+
+"Of course, I'd rather go as a soldier, but I've got no right to. I
+can ride or walk all day, and shoot straight and stand all kinds of
+weather, and killing Germans would just about tickle me to death. But
+this is a time when every man has got to do what he can do better than
+he can do anything else. And I've spent my life in shipyards.
+
+"I was a common laborer first--swinging a sledge; I had an arm then!
+That was before we had compressed-air riveters. I was a union man and
+went on strike and fought scabs and made the bosses eat crow. Now I'm
+one of the bosses. I'm what they call a capitalist and an oppressor of
+labor. Now I put down strikes and fight the unions--not that I don't
+believe in 'em, not that I don't know where labor was before they had
+unions and where it would be without 'em to-day and to-morrow, but
+because all these things have to be adjusted gradually, and because
+the main thing, after all, is building ships--just now, of course,
+especially.
+
+"When I was a workman I took pride in my job, and I thought I was an
+artist at it. I wouldn't take anybody's lip. Now that I'm a boss I
+have to take everybody's lip, because I can't strike. I can't go to my
+boss and demand higher wages and easier hours, because my boss is the
+market. But I don't suppose there's anything on earth that interests
+you less than labor problems."
+
+"They might if I knew the first thing about them."
+
+"Well, the first thing is that they are the next war, the big war
+after this one's over. The job is to keep it down till peace comes.
+Then hell will pop--if you'll pardon my French. I'm all for labor
+getting its rights, but some of the men don't want the right to
+work--they want the right to loaf. I say let the sky be the limit of
+any man's opportunity--the sky and his own limitations and ambitions.
+But a lot of the workmen don't want opportunity; they've got no
+ambition; they hate to build things. They talk about the terrible
+conditions their families live in, and how gorgeously the rich men
+live. But the rich men were poor once, and the poor can be rich--if
+they can and will.
+
+"The war is going to be the fight between the makers and the breakers,
+the uplifters and the down-draggers, you might say. And it's going to
+be some war!
+
+"The men on the wrong side--what I call the wrong side, at least--are
+just as much our enemies as the Germans. We've got to watch 'em just
+as close. They'd just as soon burn an unfinished ship as the Germans
+would sink her when she's on her way.
+
+"That little ship I'm building now! Would you believe it? It has to be
+guarded every minute. Most of our men are all right. They'd work
+themselves to death for the ship, and they pour out their sweat like
+prayers. But sneaks get in among 'em, and it only takes a fellow with
+a bomb one minute to undo the six months' work of a hundred."
+
+"Tell me about your ship," she said.
+
+A ship she could understand. It was personal and real; labor theories
+were as foreign to her as problems in metaphysics.
+
+"Well, it's my first-born, this ship," he said. "Of course I've built
+a lot of other ships, but they were for other people--just jobs, for
+wages or commissions. This one is all my own--a freighter, ugly as sin
+and commodious as hell--I beg your pardon! But the world needs
+freighters--the hungry mobs of Europe, they'll be glad to see my
+little ship come in, if ever she does. If she doesn't I'll-- But
+she'll last a few trips before they submarine her--I guess."
+
+He fell silent among his visions and left her to her own.
+
+He saw himself wandering about a shipyard, a poor thing, but his own.
+His mind was like a mold-loft full of designs and detail-drawings to
+scale, blue-prints and models. On the way a ship was growing for him.
+As yet she was a ghastly thing all ribs, like the skeleton of some
+ancient sea-monster left ashore at high tide and perished eons back,
+leaving only the bones.
+
+His fancy saw her transverses taking on their iron flesh. He saw the
+day of her nativity. He heard them knock out the blocks that lowered
+the sliding-ways to the groundways and sent her swirling into the
+sea.
+
+He saw her ready for her cargo, saw a Niagara of wheat cascading into
+her hold. He saw her go forth into the sea.
+
+Then he saw the ship stagger, a wound opened in her side, from the
+bullet of a submarine.
+
+It was all so vivid that he spoke aloud in a frenzy of ire:
+
+"If the Germans kill my ship I'll kill a German! By God, I will!"
+
+He was startled by the sound of his own voice, and he begged her
+pardon humbly.
+
+She had been away in reverie, too. The word "submarine" had sent her
+back into her haunting remembrances of the _Lusitania_ and of her own
+helpless entanglement in the fate of other ships--their names as
+unknown to her as the names and faces of the men that died with them,
+or perished of starvation and thirst in the lifeboats sent adrift. The
+thought of these poor anonymities frightened her. She shuddered with
+such violence that Davidge was startled from his own wrath.
+
+"You're having a chill," he said. "I wish you would take my coat. You
+don't want to get sick."
+
+She shook her head and chattered, "No, no."
+
+"Then you'd better get out and walk up and down this bridge awhile.
+There's not even a lap-robe here."
+
+"I should like to walk, I think."
+
+She stepped out, aided by his hand, a strong hand, and warm about her
+icy fingers. Her knees were weak, and he set her elbow in the hollow
+of his arm and guided her. They walked like the blind leading the
+blind through a sea of pitch. The only glimmer was the little
+scratches of light pinked in the dead sky by a few stars.
+
+"'It's beautiful overhead, if you're going that way,'" Davidge
+quoted.
+
+He set out briskly, but Marie Louise hung back timidly.
+
+"Not so fast! I can't see a thing."
+
+"That's the best time to keep moving."
+
+"But aren't you afraid to push on when you can't see where you're
+going?" she demanded.
+
+"Who can ever tell where he's going? The sunlight is no guaranty.
+We're all bats in the daytime and not cats at night. The main thing is
+to sail on and on and on."
+
+She caught a little of his recklessness--suffered him to hurry her to
+and fro through the inky air till she was panting for breath and
+tired. Then they groped to the rail and peered vainly down at the
+brook, which, like an unbroken child, was heard and not seen. They
+leaned their elbows on the rail and stared into the muffling gloom.
+
+"I think I'll have another of your cigarettes," he said.
+
+"So will I," said she.
+
+There was a cozy fireside moment as they took their lights from the
+same match. When he threw the match overboard he said:
+
+"Like a human life, eh? A little spark between dark and dark."
+
+He was surprised at stumbling into rhyme, and apologized. But she
+said:
+
+"Do you know, I rather like that. It reminds me of a poem about a
+rain-storm--Russell Lowell's, I fancy; it told of a flock of sheep
+scampering down a dusty road and clattering across a bridge and back
+to the dust again. He said it was like human life, 'a little noise
+between two silences.'"
+
+"H'm!" was the best Davidge could do. But the agony of the brevity of
+existence seized them both by the hearts, and their hearts throbbed
+and bled like birds crushed in the claws of hawks. Their hearts had
+such capabilities of joy, such songs in them, such love and longing,
+such delight in beauty--and beauty was so beautiful, so frequent, so
+thrilling! Yet they could spend but a glance, a sigh, a regret, a
+gratitude, and then their eyes were out, their ears still, their lips
+cold, their hearts dust. The ache of it was beyond bearing.
+
+"Let's walk. I'm cold again," she whispered.
+
+He felt that she needed the sense of hurry, and he went so fast that
+she had to run to keep up with him. There seemed to be some comfort in
+the privilege of motion for its own sake; motion was life; motion was
+godhood; motion was escape from the run-down clock of death.
+
+Back and forth they kept their promenade, till her body refused to
+answer the whips of restlessness. Her brain began to shut up shop. It
+would do no more thinking this night.
+
+She stumbled toward the taxicab. Davidge lifted her in, and she sank
+down, completely done. She fell asleep.
+
+Davidge took his place in the cab and wondered lazily at the quaint
+adventure. He was only slightly concerned with wondering at the cause
+of her uneasiness. He was used to minding his own business.
+
+She slept so well that when the groping search-light of a coming
+automobile began to slash the night and the rubber wheels boomed
+across the bridge she did not waken. If the taxi-driver heard its
+sound, he preferred to pretend not to. The passengers in the passing
+car must have been surprised, but they took their wonderment with
+them. We so often imagine mischief when there is innocence and _vice
+versa_; for opportunity is just as likely to create distaste as
+interest and the lack of it to instigate enterprise.
+
+Davidge drowsed and smiled contentedly in the dark and did not know
+that he was not awake until at some later time he was half aroused by
+the meteoric glow and whiz of another automobile. It had gone before
+he was quite awake, and he sank back into sleep.
+
+Before he knew it, many black hours had slid by and daylight was come;
+the rosy fingers of light were moving about, recreating the world to
+vision, sketching a landscape hazily on a black canvas, then stippling
+in the colors, and finishing, swiftly but gradually, the details to an
+inconceivable minuteness of definition, giving each leaf its own sharp
+contour and every rock its every facet. From the brook below a
+mistlike cigarette smoke exhaled. The sky was crimson, then pink, then
+amber, then blue.
+
+Birds began to twitter, to fashion little crystal stanzas, and to
+hurl themselves about the valley as if catapults propelled them. One
+songster perched on the iron rail of the bridge and practised a vocal
+lesson, cocking his head from side to side and seeming to approve his
+own skill.
+
+A furred caterpillar resumed his march across the Appian Way, making
+of each crack between boards a great abyss to be bridged cautiously
+with his own body. The day's work was begun, while Davidge drowsed and
+smiled contentedly at the side of the strange, sleeping woman as if
+they had been married for years.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+The sky was filled with morning when a noise startled Davidge out of
+nullity. He was amazed to find a strange woman asleep at his elbow. He
+remembered her suddenly.
+
+With a clatter of wheels and cans and hoofs a milkman's wagon and team
+came out of the hills. Davidge stepped down from the car and stopped
+the loud-voiced, wide-mouthed driver with a gesture. He spoke in a low
+voice which the milkman did not copy. The taxi-driver woke to the
+extent of one eye and a horrible yawn, while Davidge explained his
+plight.
+
+"Gasolene gave out, hey?" said the milkman.
+
+"It certainly did," said Davidge, "and I'd be very much obliged if
+you'd get me some more."
+
+"Wa-all, I'm purty busy."
+
+"I'll pay you anything you ask."
+
+The milkman was modest in his ambitions.
+
+"How'd two dollars strike ye?"
+
+"Five would be better if you hurried."
+
+This looked suspicious, but the milkman consented.
+
+"Wa-all, all right, but what would I fetch the gasolene in?"
+
+"One of your milk-cans."
+
+"They're all fuller melk."
+
+"I'll buy one, milk and all."
+
+"Wa-all, I reckon I'll hev to oblige you."
+
+"Here's five dollars on account. There'll be five more when you get
+back."
+
+"Wa-all, all ri-ight. Get along there, Jawn Henry."
+
+John Henry got along. Even his _cloppety-clop_ did not waken Miss
+Webling.
+
+The return of the rattletrap and the racket of filling the tank with
+the elixir finished her sleep, however. She woke in confusion,
+finding herself sitting up, dressed, in her little room, with three
+strange men at work outside.
+
+When the tank was filled, Davidge entered her compartment with a
+cheery "Good morning," and slammed the door after him. The gasolene,
+like the breath of a god, gave life to the dead. The car snarled and
+jumped, and went roaring across the bridge, up the hill and down
+another, and down that and up another.
+
+Here they caught, through a frame of leaves, a glimpse of Washington
+in the sunrise, a great congregation of marble temples and trees and
+sky-colored waters, the shaft of the Monument lighted with the milky
+radiance of a mountain peak on its upper half, the lower part still
+dusk with valley shadow, and across the plateau of roofs the solemn
+Capitol in as mythical a splendor as the stately dome that Kubla Khan
+decreed in Xanadu.
+
+This sight of Canaan from Pisgah-height was no luxury to the
+taxi-driver, and he hustled his coffee-grinder till he reached Rosslyn
+once more, crossed the Potomac's many-tinted stream, and rattled
+through Georgetown and the shabby, sleeping little shops of M Street
+into the tree-tunnels of Washington.
+
+He paused to say, "Where do we go from here?"
+
+Davidge and Marie Louise looked their chagrin. They still had no place
+to go.
+
+"To the Pennsylvania Station," said Davidge. "We can at least get
+breakfast there."
+
+The streets of Washington are never so beautiful as at this still hour
+when nothing stirs but the wind in the trees and the grass on the
+lawns, and hardly anybody is abroad except the generals on their
+bronze horses fronting their old battles with heroic eyes. The station
+outside was something Olympic but unfrequented. Inside, it was a vast
+cathedral of untenanted pews.
+
+Davidge paid the driver a duke's ransom. There was no porter about,
+and he carried Marie Louise's suit-cases to the parcel-room. Her
+baggage had had a long journey. She retreated to the women's room for
+what toilet she could make, and came forth with a very much washed
+face. Somnambulistic negroes took their orders at the lunch-counter.
+
+Marie Louise had weakly decided to return to New York again, but the
+hot coffee was full of defiance, and she said that she would make
+another try at Mrs. Widdicombe as soon as a human hour arrived.
+
+And she showed a tactfulness that won much respect from Davidge when
+she said:
+
+"Do get your morning paper and read it. I'm sure I have nothing to say
+that I haven't said, and if I had, it could wait till you find out how
+the battle goes in Europe."
+
+He bought her a paper, too, and they sat on a long bench, exchanging
+comments on the news that made almost every front page a chapter in
+world history.
+
+She heard him groan with rage. When she looked up he pointed to the
+submarine record of that week.
+
+"Last week the losses took a horrible jump--forty ships of over
+sixteen hundred tons. This week it's almost as bad--thirty-eight
+ships of over sixteen hundred, thirteen ships under, and eight
+fishing-vessels. Think of it--all of 'em merchant-ships!
+
+"Pretty soon I've got to send my ship out to run the gantlet. She's
+like Little Red Riding Hood going through the forest to take old
+Granny Britain some food. And the wolves are waiting for her. What a
+race of people, what a pack of beasts!"
+
+Marie Louise had an idea. "I'll tell you a pretty name for your
+ship--_Little Red Riding Hood_. Why don't you give her that?"
+
+He laughed. "The name would be heavier than the cargo. I wonder what
+the crew would make of it. No, this ship, my first one, is to be named
+after"--he lowered his voice as one does on entering a church--"after
+my mother."
+
+"Oh, that's beautiful!" Marie Louise said. "And will she be there to
+christen-- Oh, I remember, you said--"
+
+He nodded three or four times in wretchedness. But the grief was his
+own, and he must not exploit it. He assumed an abrupt cheer.
+
+"I'll name the next ship after you, if you don't mind."
+
+This was too glorious to be believed. What bouquet or jewel could
+equal it? She clapped her hands like a child hearing a Christmas
+promise.
+
+"What is your first name, Miss Webling?"
+
+She suddenly realized that they were not, after all, such old friends
+as the night had seemed to make them.
+
+"My first two names," she said, "are Marie Louise."
+
+"Oh! Well, then we'll call the ship _Marie Louise_."
+
+She saw that he was a little disappointed in the name, so she said:
+
+"When I was a girl they called me Mamise."
+
+She was puzzled to see how this startled him.
+
+He jumped audibly and fastened a searching gaze on her. Mamise! He had
+thought of Mamise when he saw her, and now she gave the name. Could
+she possibly be the Mamise he remembered? He started to ask her, but
+checked himself and blushed. A fine thing it would be to ask this
+splendid young princess, "Pardon me, Princess, but were you playing in
+cheap vaudeville a few years ago?" It was an improbable coincidence
+that he should meet her thus, but an almost impossible coincidence
+that she should wear both the name and the mien of Mamise and not be
+Mamise. But he dared not ask her.
+
+She noted his blush and stammer, but she was afraid to ask their
+cause.
+
+"_Mamise_ it shall be," he said.
+
+And she answered, "I was never so honored in my life."
+
+"Of course," he warned her, "the boat isn't built yet. In fact, the
+new yard isn't built yet. There's many a slip 'twixt the keel and the
+ship. She might never live to be launched. Some of these sneaking
+loafers on our side may blow her up before the submarines get a chance
+at her."
+
+There he was, speaking of submarines once more! She shivered, and she
+looked at the clock and got up and said:
+
+"I think I'll try Mrs. Widdicombe now."
+
+"Let me go along," said Davidge.
+
+But she shook her head. "I've taken enough of your life--for the
+present."
+
+Trying to concoct a felicitous reply, he achieved only an eloquent
+silence. He put her and her luggage aboard a taxicab, and then she
+gave him her most cordial hand.
+
+"I could never hope to thank you enough," she said, "and I won't begin
+to try. Send me your address when you have one, and I'll mail you Mrs.
+Widdicombe's confidential telephone number. I do want to see you soon
+again, unless you've had enough of me for a lifetime."
+
+He did very handsomely by the lead she gave him:
+
+"I couldn't have enough--not in a lifetime."
+
+The taxi-driver snipped the strands of their gaze as he whisked her
+away.
+
+Marie Louise felt a forenoon elation in the cool air and the bright
+streets, thick with men and women in herds hurrying to their patriotic
+tasks, and a multitude of officers and enlisted men seeking their
+desks. She was here to join them, and she hoped that it would not be
+too hard to find some job with a little thrill of service in it.
+
+As she went through Georgetown now M Street was different--full of
+marketers and of briskness. The old bridge was crowded. As her car
+swooped up the hills and skirted the curves to Polly Widdicombe's she
+began to be afraid again. But she was committed to the adventure and
+she was eager for the worst of it. She found the house without trouble
+and saw in the white grove of columns Polly herself, bidding good-by
+to her husband, whose car was waiting at the foot of the steps.
+
+Polly hailed Marie Louise with cries of such delight that before the
+cab had made the circle and drawn up at the steps the hunted look was
+gone and youth come back to Marie Louise's anxious smile. Polly kissed
+her and presented her husband, pointing to the gold leaves on his
+shoulders with militaristic pride.
+
+Widdicombe blushed and said: "Fearless desk-fighter has to hurry off
+to battle with ruthless stenographers. Such are the horrors of war!"
+
+He insisted on paying Marie Louise's driver, though she said, "Women
+will never be free so long as men insist on paying all their bills."
+
+Polly said: "Hush, or the brute will set me free!"
+
+He kissed Polly, waved to Marie Louise, stepped into his car, and shot
+away.
+
+Polly watched him with devout eyes and said:
+
+"Poor boy! he's dying to get across into the trenches, but they won't
+take him because he's a little near-sighted, thank God! And he works
+like a dog, day and night." Then she returned to the rites of
+hospitality. "Had your breakfast?"
+
+"At the station." The truth for once coincided very pleasantly with
+convenience.
+
+"Then I know what you want," said Polly, "a bath and a nap. After that
+all-night train-trip you ought to be a wreck."
+
+"I am."
+
+Polly led her to a welcoming room that would have been quite pretty
+enough if it had had only a bed and a chair. Marie Louise felt as if
+she had come out of the wilderness into a city of refuge. Polly had an
+engagement, a committee meeting of women war-workers, and would not be
+back until luncheon-time. Marie Louise steeped herself in a hot tub,
+then in a long sweet sleep in a real bed. She was wakened by the
+voices of children, and looked out from her window to see the
+Widdicombe tots drilling in a company of three with a drum, a flag,
+and a wooden gun. The American army was not much bigger compared with
+the European nations in arms, but it would grow.
+
+Polly came home well charged with electricity, the new-woman idea that
+was claiming half of the war, the true squaw-spirit that takes up the
+drudgery at home while the braves go out to swap missiles with the
+enemy. When Marie Louise said that she, too, had come to Washington to
+get into harness somewhere, Polly promised her a plethora of
+opportunities.
+
+At luncheon Polly was reminded of the fact that a photographer was
+coming over from Washington. He had asked for sittings, and she had
+acceded to his request.
+
+"I never can get photographs enough of my homely self," said Polly.
+"I'm always hoping that by some accident the next one will make me
+look as I want to look--make ithers see me as I see mysel'!"
+
+When the camera-man arrived Polly insisted that Marie Louise must
+pose, too, and grew so urgent that she consented at last, to quiet
+her. They spent a harrowing afternoon striking attitudes all over the
+place, indoors and out, standing, sitting, heads and half-lengths,
+profile and three-quarters and full face. Their muscles ached with the
+struggle to assume and retain beatific expressions on an empty soul.
+
+The consequences of that afternoon of self-impersonation were
+far-reaching for Marie Louise.
+
+According to the Washingtonian custom, one of the new photographs
+appeared the following Sunday in each of the four newspapers. The
+Sunday after that Marie Louise's likeness appeared with "Dolly
+Madison's" and Jean Elliott's syndicated letters on "The Week in
+Washington" in Sunday supplements throughout the country. Every now
+and then her likeness popped out at her from _Town and Country_,
+_Vogue_, _Harper's Bazaar_, _The Spur_, what not?
+
+One of those countless images fell into the hands of Jake Nuddle, who
+had been keeping an incongruous eye on the Sunday supplements for some
+time. This time the double of Mamise was not posed as a farmerette in
+an English landscape, but as a woman of fashion in a Colonial
+drawing-room.
+
+He hurried to his wife with the picture, and she called it "Mamise"
+with a recrudescent anguish of doubt.
+
+"She's in this country now, the paper says," said Jake. "She's in
+Washington, and if I was you I'd write her a little letter astin' her
+is she our sister."
+
+Mrs. Nuddle was crying too loosely to note that "our." The more Jake
+considered the matter the less he liked the thought of waiting for a
+letter to go and an answer to come.
+
+"Meet 'em face to face; that's me!" he declared at last. "I think I'll
+just take a trip to the little old capital m'self. I can tell the rest
+the c'mittee I'm goin' to put a few things up to some them Senators
+and Congersmen. That'll get my expenses paid for me."
+
+There simply was nobody that Jake Nuddle would not cheat, if he
+could.
+
+His always depressing wife suggested: "Supposin' the lady says she
+ain't Mamise, how you goin' to prove she is? You never seen her."
+
+Jake snarled at her for a fool, but he knew that she was right. He
+resisted the dismal necessity as long as he could, and then extended
+one of his most cordial invitations:
+
+"Aw, hell! I reckon I'll have to drag you along."
+
+He grumbled and cursed his fate and resolved to make Mamise pay double
+for ruining his excursion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+For a time Marie Louise had the solace of being busy and of nibbling
+at the edge of great occasions. The nation was reconstituting its
+whole life, and Washington was the capital of all the Allied peoples,
+their brazen serpent and their promise of salvation. Almost everybody
+was doing with his or her might what his or her hand found to do.
+Repetition and contradiction of effort abounded; there was every
+confusion of counsel and of action. But the Republic was gathering
+itself for a mighty leap into the arena. For the first time women were
+being not merely permitted, but pleaded with, to lend their aid.
+
+Marie Louise rolled bandages at a Red Cross room presided over by a
+pleasant widow, Mrs. Perry Merithew, with a son in the aviation, who
+was forever needing bandages. Mamise tired of these, bought a car and
+joined the Women's Motor Corps. She had a collision with a reckless
+wretch named "Pet" Bettany, and resigned. She helped with big
+festivals, toiled day and night at sweaters, and finally bought
+herself a knitting-machine and spun out half a dozen pairs of socks a
+day, by keeping a sweatshop pace for sweatshop hours. She was trying
+to find a more useful job. The trouble was that everybody wanted to be
+at something, to get into a uniform of some sort, to join the
+universal mobilization.
+
+She went out little of evenings, preferring to keep herself in
+the seclusion of the Rosslyn home. Gradually her fears subsided
+and she felt that her welcome was wearing through. She began to
+look for a place to live. Washington was in a panic of rentals.
+Apartments cost more than houses. A modest creature who had paid
+seventy-five dollars a month for a little flat let it for five
+hundred a month for the duration of the war. A gorgeous Sultana
+who had a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar-a-month apartment rented it
+for a thousand dollars a month "for the duration." Marie Louise had
+money enough, but she could hardly find anything that it would
+buy.
+
+She planned to secure a clerical post in some of the offices. She took
+up shorthand and poked a typewriter and read books on system and
+efficiency, then gave them up as Greek.
+
+Once in a while she saw Ross Davidge. He suffered an intermittent
+fever of hope and despondency. He, too, was trying to do his bit, but
+he was lost in the maelstrom swirling through the channels of official
+life. He would come to town for a few days, wait about, fuming, and
+return in disgust to his shipyard. It was not altogether patriotism
+that pulled him back to Washington. Marie Louise was there, and he
+lost several appointments with the great folk he came to see, because
+their hours clashed with Marie Louise's.
+
+On one of his voyages he was surprised to find at his hotel an
+invitation to dine at Mrs. Prothero's. Little as he knew of the
+eminent ones of the fashionable world, he knew the famous name of
+Prothero. He had spoken with reverence always of her late husband, one
+of the rebuilders of the American navy, a voice crying in the
+wilderness for a revival of the ancient glories of the merchant
+marine. Davidge had never met him or his widow. He felt that he could
+not refuse the unexplained opportunity to pay at least his respects to
+the relict of his idol.
+
+But he wondered by what means Mrs. Prothero, whom everybody had heard
+of, had heard of him. When he entered her door on the designated
+evening his riddle was answered.
+
+The butler glanced at his card, then picked from a heap on the console
+a little envelope which he proffered on his tray. The envelope was
+about the size of those that new-born parents use to inclose the
+proclamation of the advent of a new-born infant. The card inside
+Davidge's envelope carried the legend, "Miss Webling."
+
+The butler led him to the drawing-room door and announced him. There
+indeed was Marie Louise, arm in arm with a majestic granddam in a
+coronet of white hair.
+
+Marie Louise put out her hand, and Davidge went to it. She clasped his
+and passed it on to Mrs. Prothero with a character:
+
+"This is the great Mr. Davidge, the shipwright."
+
+Mrs. Prothero pressed his hand and kept it while she said: "It is
+like Marie Louise to bring youth to cheer up an old crone like me."
+
+Davidge muffed the opening horribly. Instead of saying something
+brilliant about how young Mrs. Prothero looked, he said:
+
+"Youth? I'm a hundred years old."
+
+"You are!" Mrs. Prothero cried. "Then how old does that make me, in
+the Lord's name--a million?"
+
+Davidge could not even recover the foot he had put in it. By looking
+foolish and keeping silent he barely saved himself from adding the
+other foot. Mrs. Prothero smiled at his discomfiture.
+
+"Don't worry. I'm too ancient to be caught by pretty speeches--or to
+like the men who have 'em always ready."
+
+She pressed his hand again and turned to welcome the financial
+Cyclops, James Dyckman, and his huge wife, and Captain Fargeton, a
+foreign military attaché with service chevrons and wound-chevrons and
+a _croix de guerre_, and a wife, who had been Mildred Tait.
+
+"All that and an American spouse!" said Davidge to Marie Louise.
+
+"Have you never had an American spouse?" she asked, brazenly.
+
+"Not one!" he confessed.
+
+Major and Polly Widdicombe had come in with Marie Louise, and Davidge
+drifted into their circle. The great room filled gradually with men of
+past or future fame, and the poor women who were concerned in enduring
+its acquisition.
+
+Marie Louise was radiant in mood and queenly in attire. Davidge was
+startled by the magnificence of her jewelry. Some of it was of old
+workmanship, royal heirloomry. Her accent was decidedly English, yet
+her race was undoubtedly American. The many things about her that had
+puzzled him subconsciously began to clamor at least for the attention
+of curiosity. He watched her making the best of herself, as a skilful
+woman does when she is all dressed up in handsome scenery among
+toplofty people.
+
+Polly was describing the guests as they came in:
+
+"That's Colonel Harvey Forbes. His name has been sent to Congress for
+approval as a brigadier-general. I knew him in the midst of the
+wildest scandal--remind me to tell you. He was only a captain then.
+He'll probably end as a king or something. This war is certainly good
+to some people."
+
+Davidge watched Marie Louise studying the somber officer. He was a bit
+jealous, shamed by his own civilian clothes. Suddenly Marie Louise's
+smile at Polly's chatter stopped short, shriveled, then returned to
+her face with a look of effort. Her muscles seemed to be determined
+that her lips should not droop.
+
+Davidge heard the butler announce:
+
+"Lady Clifton-Wyatt and General Sir Hector Havendish."
+
+Davidge wondered which of the two names could have so terrified
+Marie Louise. Naturally he supposed that it was the man's. He turned
+to study the officer in his British uniform. He saw a tall,
+loose-jointed, jovial man of horsy look and carriage, and no hint of
+mystery--one would say an intolerance of mystery.
+
+Lady Clifton-Wyatt was equally amiable. She laughed and wrung the
+hands of Mrs. Prothero. They were like two school-girls met in another
+century.
+
+Davidge noted that Marie Louise turned her back and listened with
+extraordinary interest to Major Widdicombe's old story about an
+Irishman who did or said something or other. Davidge heard Mrs.
+Prothero say to Lady Clifton-Wyatt, with all the joy in the world:
+
+"Who do you suppose is here but our Marie Louise?"
+
+"Our Marie Louise?" Lady Clifton-Wyatt echoed, with a slight chill.
+
+"Yes, Marie Louise Webling. It was at her house that I met you. Where
+has the child got to? There she is."
+
+Without raising her voice she focused it between Marie Louise's
+shoulder-blades.
+
+"Marie Louise, my dear!"
+
+Marie Louise turned and came up like a wax image on casters pulled
+forward by an invisible window-dresser. Lady Clifton-Wyatt's limber
+attitude grew erect, deadly, ominously hostile. She looked as if she
+would turn Marie Louise to stone with a Medusa glare, but she
+evidently felt that she had no right to commit petrifaction in Mrs.
+Prothero's home; so she bowed and murmured:
+
+"Ah, yis! How are you?"
+
+To Davidge's amazement, Miss Webling, instead of meeting the rebuff
+in kind, wavered before it and bowed almost gratefully. Then, to
+Davidge's confusion, Lady Clifton-Wyatt marched on him with a gush of
+cordiality as if she had been looking for him around the Seven Seas.
+She remembered him, called him by name and told him that she had seen
+his pickchah in one of the papahs, as one of the creatahs of the new
+fleet.
+
+Mrs. Prothero was stunned for a moment by the scene, but she had
+passed through so many women's wars that she had learned to
+ignore them even when--especially when--her drawing-room was the
+battleground.
+
+Her mind was drawn from the incident by the materialization of the
+butler.
+
+Lady Clifton-Wyatt, noting that the tide was setting toward the
+dining-room and that absent-minded Sir Hector was floating along the
+current at the elbow of the pretty young girl, said to Davidge:
+
+"Are you taking me out or--"
+
+It was a horrible moment, for all its unimportance, but he mumbled:
+
+"I--I am sorry, but--er--Miss Webling--"
+
+"Oh! Ah!" said Lady Clifton-Wyatt. It was a very short "Oh!" and a
+very long "Ah!" a sort of gliding, crushing "Ah!" It went over him
+like a tank, leaving him flat.
+
+Lady Clifton-Wyatt reached Sir Hector's arm in a few strides and
+unhooked him from the girl--also the girl from him. The girl was
+grateful. Sir Hector was used to disappointments.
+
+Davidge went to Marie Louise, who stood lonely and distraught. He felt
+ashamed of his word "sorry" and hoped she hadn't heard it. Silently
+and crudely he angled his arm, and she took it and went along with him
+in a somnambulism.
+
+Davidge, manlike, tried to cheer up his elbow-mate by a compliment. A
+man's first aid to a woman in distress is a compliment or a few pats
+of the hand. He said:
+
+"This is the second big dinner you and I have attended. There were
+bushels of flowers between us before, but I'd rather see your face
+than a ton of roses."
+
+The compliment fell out like a ton of coal. He did not like it at all.
+She seemed not to have heard him, for she murmured:
+
+"Yis, isn't it?"
+
+Then, as the occultists say, he went into the silence. There is
+nothing busier than a silence at a dinner. The effort to think with no
+outlet in speech kept up such a roaring in his head that he could
+hardly grasp what the rest were saying.
+
+Lady Clifton-Wyatt sat at Davidge's right and kept invading his quiet
+communion with Marie Louise by making remarks of the utmost
+graciousness somehow fermented--like wine turned vinegar.
+
+"I wonder if you remember when we met in London, Mr. Davidge? It was
+just after the poor _Lusitania_ was sunk."
+
+"So it was," said Davidge.
+
+"It was at Sir Joseph Webling's. You knew he was dead, didn't you? Or
+did you?"
+
+"Yes, Miss Webling told me."
+
+"Oh, did she! I was curious to know."
+
+She cast a look past him at Marie Louise and saw that the girl was
+about ready to make a scene. She smiled and deferred further torture.
+
+Mrs. Prothero supervened. She had the beautiful theory that the way to
+make her guests happy was to get them to talking about themselves. She
+tried to draw Davidge out of his shell. But he talked about her
+husband instead, and of the great work he had done for the navy. He
+turned the tables of graciousness on her. Her nod recognized the
+chivalry; her lips smiled with pride in her husband's praise; her eyes
+glistened with an old regret made new. "He would have been useful
+now," she sighed.
+
+"He was the man who laid the keel-blocks of our new navy," said
+Davidge. "The thing we haven't got and have got to get is a merchant
+marine."
+
+He could talk of that, though he could not celebrate himself. He was
+still going strong when the dinner was finished.
+
+Mrs. Prothero clung to the old custom. She took the women away with
+her to the drawing-room, leaving the men alone.
+
+Davidge noted that Lady Clifton-Wyatt left the dining-room with a kind
+of eagerness, Marie Louise reluctantly. She cast him a look that
+seemed to cry "Help!" He wondered what the feud could be that threw
+Miss Webling into such apparent panic. He could not tolerate the
+thought that she had a yellow streak in her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Lady Clifton-Wyatt, like many another woman, was kept in order by the
+presence of men. She knew that the least charming of attributes in
+masculine eyes are the female feline, the gift and art of claws.
+
+Men can be catty, too--tom-catty, yet contemptibly feline when they
+are not on their good behavior. There are times when the warning,
+"Gentlemen, there are ladies present," restores them to order as
+quickly as the entrance of a teacher turns a school-room of young
+savages into an assembly of young saints.
+
+The women in Mrs. Prothero's drawing-room could not hear any of the
+words the men mixed with their smoke, but they could hear now and then
+a muffled explosion of laughter of a quality that indicated what had
+provoked it.
+
+The women, too, were relieved of a certain constraint by their
+isolation. They seemed to enjoy the release. It was like getting their
+minds out of tight corsets. They were not impatient for the men--as
+some of the men may have imagined. These women were of an age where
+they had something else to think of besides men. They had careers to
+make or keep among women as well as the men among men.
+
+The servants kept them on guard till the coffee, tobacco, and liqueurs
+were distributed. Then recess was declared. Marie Louise found herself
+on a huge tapestried divan provided with deep, soft cushions that held
+her like a quicksands. On one side of her was the mountainous Mrs.
+Dyckman resembling a stack of cushions cased in silk; on the other was
+Mildred Tait Fargeton, whose father had been ambassador to France.
+
+Marie Louise listened to their chatter with a frantic impatience.
+Polly was heliographing ironic messages with her eyes. Polly was
+hemmed in by the wife of a railroad juggler, who was furious at the
+Administration because it did not put all its transportation problems
+in her husband's hands. She would not have intrusted him with the
+buying of a spool of thread; but that was different.
+
+Mrs. Prothero was monopolized by Lady Clifton-Wyatt. Marie Louise
+could see that she herself was the theme of the talk, for Mrs.
+Prothero kept casting startled glances Marie-Louise-ward, and Lady
+Clifton-Wyatt glances of baleful stealth.
+
+Marie Louise had proved often enough that she was no coward, but
+even the brave turn poltroon when they fight without a sense of
+justification. Her pride told her that she ought to cross over to Lady
+Clifton-Wyatt and demand that she speak up. But her sense of guilt
+robbed her of her courage. And that oath she had given to Mr.
+Verrinder without the least reluctance now loomed before her as the
+greatest mistake of her life. Her sword and shield were both in pawn.
+
+She gave herself up for lost and had only one hope, that the men would
+not come in--especially that Ross Davidge would not come in in time to
+learn what Lady Clifton-Wyatt was so eager to publish. She gave Mrs.
+Prothero up for lost, too, and Polly. But she wanted to keep Ross
+Davidge fond of her.
+
+Then in a lull Mrs. Prothero spoke up sharply:
+
+"I simply can't believe it, my dear. I don't know that I ever saw a
+German spy, but that child is not one. I'd stake my life on it."
+
+"And now the avalanche!" thought Marie Louise.
+
+The word "spy" was beginning to have more than an academic or
+fictional interest to Americans, and it caught the ear of every person
+present.
+
+Mrs. Dyckman and Mme. Fargeton sat up as straight as their curves
+permitted and gasped:
+
+"A German spy! Who? Where?"
+
+Polly Widdicombe sprang to her feet and darted to Mrs. Prothero's
+side.
+
+"Oh, how lovely! Tell me who she is! I'm dying to shoot a spy."
+
+Marie Louise sickened at the bloodthirstiness of Polly the insouciante.
+
+Mrs. Prothero tried to put down the riot of interest by saying:
+
+"Oh, it's nothing. Lady Clifton-Wyatt is just joking."
+
+Lady Clifton-Wyatt was at bay. She shot a glance at Marie Louise and
+insisted:
+
+"Indeed I'm not! I tell you she is a spy."
+
+"Who's a spy?" Polly demanded.
+
+"Miss Webling," said Lady Clifton-Wyatt.
+
+Polly began to giggle; then she frowned with disappointment.
+
+"Oh, I thought you meant it."
+
+"I do mean it, and if you'll take my advice you'll be warned in
+time."
+
+Polly turned, expecting to find Marie Louise showing her contemptuous
+amusement, but the look she saw on Marie Louise's face was disconcerting.
+Polly's loyalty remained staunch. She hated Lady Clifton-Wyatt anyway,
+and the thought that she might be telling the truth made her a little
+more hatable. Polly stormed:
+
+"I won't permit you to slander my best friend."
+
+Lady Clifton-Wyatt replied, "I don't slahnda hah, and if she is yaw
+best friend--well--"
+
+Lady Clifton-Wyatt hated Polly and was glad of the weapon against her.
+Polly felt a sudden terrific need of retorting with a blow. Men had
+never given up the fist on the mouth as the simple, direct answer to
+an insult too complicated for any other retort. She wanted to slap
+Lady Clifton-Wyatt's face. But she did not know how to fight. Perhaps
+women will acquire the male prerogative of the smash in the jaw along
+with the other once exclusive masculine privileges. It will do them no
+end of good and help to clarify all life for them. But for the present
+Polly could only groan, "Agh!" and turn to throw an arm about Marie
+Louise and drag her forward.
+
+"I'd believe one word of Marie Louise against a thousand of yours,"
+she declared.
+
+"Very well--ahsk hah, then."
+
+Polly was crying mad, and madder than ever because she hated herself
+for crying when she got mad. She almost sobbed now to Marie Louise,
+"Tell her it's a dirty, rotten lie."
+
+Marie Louise had been dragged to her feet. She temporized, "What has
+she sai-said?"
+
+Polly snickered nervously, "Oh, nothing--except that you were a German
+spy."
+
+And now somewhere, somehow, Marie Louise found the courage of
+desperation. She laughed:
+
+"Lady Clifton-Wyatt is notori--famous for her quaint sense of humor."
+
+Lady Clifton-Wyatt sneered, "Could one expect a spy to admit it?"
+
+Marie Louise smiled patiently. "Probably not. But surely even you
+would hardly insist that denying it proves it?"
+
+This sophistry was too tangled for Polly. She spoke up:
+
+"Let's have the details, Lady Clifton-Wyatt--if you don't mind."
+
+"Yes, yes," the chorus murmured.
+
+Lady Clifton-Wyatt braced herself. "Well, in the first place Miss
+Webling is not Miss Webling."
+
+"Oh, but I am," said Marie Louise.
+
+Lady Clifton-Wyatt gasped, "You don't mean to pretend that--"
+
+"Did you read the will?" said Marie Louise.
+
+"No, of course not, but--"
+
+"It says there that I was their daughter."
+
+"Well, we'll not quibble. Legally you may have been, but actually you
+were their adopted child."
+
+"Yis?" said Marie Louise. "And where did they find me? Had you
+heard?"
+
+"Since you force me to it, I must say that it is generally believed
+that you were the natural daughter of Sir Joseph."
+
+Marie Louise was tremendously relieved by having something that she
+could deny. She laughed with a genuineness that swung the credulity
+all her way. She asked:
+
+"And who was my mother--my natural mother, could you tell me? I really
+ought to know."
+
+"She is believed to have been a--a native of Australia."
+
+"Good Heavens! You don't mean a kangaroo?"
+
+"An actress playing in Vienna."
+
+"Oh, I am relieved! And Sir Joseph was my father--yes. Do go on."
+
+"Whether Sir Joseph was your father or not, he was born in Germany and
+so was his wife, and they took a false oath of allegiance to his
+Majesty. All the while they were loyal only to the Kaiser. They worked
+for him, spied for him. It is said that the Kaiser had promised to
+make Sir Joseph one of the rulers over England when he captured the
+island. Sir Joseph was to have any castle he wanted and untold
+wealth."
+
+"What was I to have?" Marie Louise was able to mock her. "Wasn't I to
+have at least Westminster Abbey to live in? And one of the crown
+princes for a husband?"
+
+Lady Clifton-Wyatt lost her temper and her bearings.
+
+"Heaven knows what you were promised, but you did your best to earn
+it, whatever it was."
+
+Mrs. Prothero lost patience. "Really, my dear Lady Clifton-Wyatt, this
+is all getting beyond me."
+
+Lady Clifton-Wyatt grew scarlet, too. She spoke with the wrath of a
+Tisiphone whipping herself to a frenzy. "I will bring you proofs. This
+creature was a paid secret agent, a go-between for Sir Joseph and the
+Wilhelmstrasse. She carried messages. She went into the slums of
+Whitechapel disguised as a beggar to meet the conspirators. She
+carried them lists of ships with their cargoes, dates of sailing,
+destinations. She carried great sums of money. She was the paymaster
+of the spies. Her hands are red with the blood of British sailors and
+women and children. She grew so bold that at last she attracted the
+attention of even Scotland Yard. She was followed, traced to Sir
+Joseph's home. It was found that she lived at his house.
+
+"One of the spies, named Easling or Oesten, was her lover. He was
+caught and met his deserts before a firing-squad in the Tower. His
+confession implicated Sir Joseph. The police raided his place. A
+terrific fight ensued. He resisted arrest. He tried to shoot one of
+our police. The bullet went wild and killed his wife. Before he could
+fire again he was shot down by one of our men."
+
+The astonishing transformations the story had undergone in its transit
+from gossip to gossip stunned Marie Louise. The memory of the reality
+saddened her beyond laughter. Her distress was real, but she had
+self-control enough to focus it on Lady Clifton-Wyatt and murmur:
+
+"Poor thing, she is quite mad!"
+
+There is nothing that so nearly drives one insane as to be accused of
+insanity.
+
+The prosecutrix almost strangled on her indignation at Marie Louise's
+calm.
+
+"The effrontery of this woman is unendurable, Mrs. Prothero. If you
+believe her, you must permit me to leave. I know what I am saying. I
+have had what I tell you from the best authority. Of course, it may
+sound insane, but wait until you learn what the German secret agents
+have been doing in America for years and what they are doing now."
+
+There had been publication enough of the sickening duplicity of
+ambassadors and attachés to lead the Americans to believe that
+Teutonism meant anything revolting. Mrs. Prothero was befuddled at
+this explosion in her quiet home. She asked:
+
+"But surely all this has never been published, has it? I think we
+should have heard of it here."
+
+"Of course not," said Lady Clifton-Wyatt. "We don't publish the
+accounts of the submarines we sink, do we? No more do we tell the
+Germans what spies of theirs we have captured. And, since Sir Joseph
+and his wife were dead, there would have been no profit in publishing
+broadcast the story of the battle. So they agreed to let it be known
+that they died peacefully or rather painfully in their beds, of
+ptomaine poisoning."
+
+"That's true," said Mrs. Prothero. "That's what I read. That's what
+I've always understood."
+
+Now, curiously, as often happens in court, the discovery that a
+witness has stumbled on one truth in a pack of lies renders all he has
+said authentic and shifts the guilt to the other side. Marie Louise
+could feel the frost of suspicion against her forming in the air.
+
+Polly made one more onset: "But, tell me, Lady Clifton-Wyatt, where
+was Marie Louise during all this Wild West End pistol-play?"
+
+"In her room with her lover," snarled Lady Clifton-Wyatt. "The
+servants saw her there."
+
+This threw a more odious light on Marie Louise. She was not merely a
+nice clean spy, but a wanton.
+
+Polly groaned: "Tell that to Scotland Yard! I'd never believe it."
+
+"Scotland Yard knows it without my telling," said Lady Clifton-Wyatt.
+
+"But how did Marie Louise come to escape and get to America?"
+
+"Because England did not want to shoot a woman, especially not a
+young woman of a certain prettiness. So they let her go, when she
+swore that she would never return to England. But they did not trust
+her. She is under observation now! Your home is watched, my dear Mrs.
+Widdicombe, and I dare say there is a man on guard outside now, my
+dear Mrs. Prothero."
+
+This sent a chill along every spine. Marie Louise was frightened out
+of her own brief bravado.
+
+There was a lull in the trial while everybody reveled in horror. Then
+Mrs. Prothero spoke in a judicial tone.
+
+"And now, Miss Webling, please tell us your side of all this. What
+have you to say in your own behalf?"
+
+Marie Louise's mouth suddenly turned dry as bark; her tongue was like
+a dead leaf. She was inarticulate with remembrance of her oath to
+Verrinder. She just managed to whisper:
+
+"Nothing!"
+
+It sounded like an autumn leaf rasping across a stone. Polly cried out
+in agony:
+
+"Marie Louise!"
+
+Marie Louise shook her head and could neither think nor speak. There
+was a hush of waiting. It was broken by the voices of the men
+strolling in together. They were utterly unwelcome. They stopped and
+stared at the women all staring at Marie Louise.
+
+Seeing Davidge about to ask what the tableau stood for, she found
+voice to say:
+
+"Mr. Davidge, would you be so good as to take me home--to Mrs.
+Widdicombe's, that is. I--I am a little faint."
+
+"Delighted! I mean--I'm sorry--I'd be glad," he stammered, eager to be
+at her service, yet embarrassed by the sudden appeal.
+
+"You'll pardon me, Mrs. Prothero, for running away!"
+
+"Of course," said Mrs. Prothero, still dazed.
+
+He bowed to her, and all round. Marie Louise nodded and whispered,
+"Good night!" and moved toward the door waveringly. Davidge's heart
+leaped with pity for her.
+
+Lady Clifton-Wyatt checked him as he hurried past her.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Davidge, I'm stopping at the Shoreham. Won't you drop in and
+have a cup of tea with me to-morrow at hahf pahst fah?"
+
+"Thank you! Yes!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+The intended victim of Lady Clifton-Wyatt's little lynching-bee walked
+away, holding her head high. But she felt the noose still about her
+neck and wondered when the rope would draw her back and up.
+
+Marie Louise marched through Mrs. Prothero's hall in excellent form,
+with just the right amount of dizziness to justify her escape on the
+plea of sudden illness. The butler, like a benign destiny, opened the
+door silently and let her out into the open as once before in London a
+butler had opened a door and let her into the welcome refuge of
+walls.
+
+She gulped the cool night air thirstily, and it gave her courage.
+But it gave her no wisdom. She had indeed got away from Lady
+Clifton-Wyatt's direct accusation of being a spy and she had brought
+with her unscathed the only man whose good opinion was important to
+her. But she did not know what she wanted to do with him, except that
+she did not want him to fall into Lady Clifton-Wyatt's hands--in
+which she had left her reputation.
+
+Polly Widdicombe would have gone after Marie Louise forthwith, but
+Polly did not intend to leave her pet foewoman in possession of the
+field--not that she loved Marie Louise more, but that she loved Lady
+Clifton-Wyatt less. Polly was dazed and bewildered by Marie Louise's
+defection, but she would not accept Lady Clifton-Wyatt's version of
+this story or of any other.
+
+Besides, Polly gleaned that Marie Louise wanted to be alone, and she
+knew that the best gift friendship can bestow at times is solitude.
+The next best gift is defense in absence. Polly announced that she
+would not permit her friend to be traduced; and Lady Clifton-Wyatt,
+seeing that the men had flocked in from the dining-room and knowing
+that men always discount one woman's attack on another as mere
+cattiness, assumed her most angelic mien and changed the subject.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+As usual in retreats, the first problem was transportation. Marie
+Louise found herself and Davidge outside Mrs. Prothero's door, with no
+means of getting to Rosslyn. She had come in the Widdicombe car;
+Davidge had come in a hotel cab and sent it away. Luckily at last a
+taxi returning to the railroad terminal whizzed by. Davidge yelled in
+vain. Then he put his two fingers to his mouth and let out a short
+blast that brought the taxi-driver round. In accordance with the
+traffic rules, he had to make the circuit of the big statue-crowned
+circle in front of Mrs. Prothero's home, one of those numerous hubs
+that give Washington the effect of what some one called "revolving
+streets."
+
+When he drew up at the curb Davidge's first question was:
+
+"How's your gasolene supply?"
+
+"Full up, boss."
+
+Marie Louise laughed. "You don't want to spend another night in a taxi
+with me, I see."
+
+Davidge writhed at this deduction. He started to say, "I'd be glad to
+spend the rest of my life in a taxi with you." That sounded a little
+too flamboyant, especially with a driver listening in. So he said
+nothing but "Huh!"
+
+He explained to the driver the route to Grinden Hall, and they set
+forth.
+
+Marie Louise had a dilemma of her own. Lady Clifton-Wyatt had had the
+last word, and it had been an invitation to Davidge to call on her.
+Worse yet, he had accepted it. Lady Clifton-Wyatt's purpose was, of
+course, to rob Marie Louise of this last friend. Perhaps the wretch
+had a sentimental interest in Davidge, too. She was a widow and a
+man-grabber; she still had a tyrannic beauty and a greed of conquest.
+Marie Louise was determined that Davidge should not fall into her
+clutches, but she could hardly exact a promise from him to stay away.
+
+The taxi was crossing the aqueduct bridge before she could brave
+the point. She was brazen enough to say, "You'll accept Lady
+Clifton-Wyatt's invitation to tea, of course?"
+
+"Oh, I suppose so," said Davidge. "No American woman can resist a
+lord; so how could an American man resist a Lady?"
+
+"Oh!"
+
+This helpless syllable expressed another defeat for Marie Louise. When
+they reached the house she bade him good night without making any
+arrangement for a good morrow, though Davidge held her hand decidedly
+longer than ever before.
+
+She stood on the portico and watched his cab drive off. She gazed
+toward Washington and did not see the dreamy constellation it made
+with the shaft of the Monument ghostly luminous as if with a
+phosphorescence of its own. She felt an outcast indeed. She imagined
+Polly hurrying back to ask questions that could not be dodged any
+longer. She had no right to defend herself offensively from the
+rightful demands of a friend and hostess. Besides, the laws of
+hospitality would not protect her from Polly's temper. Polly would
+have a perfect right to order her from the house. And she would, too,
+when she knew everything. It would be best to decamp before being
+asked to.
+
+Marie Louise whirled and sped into the house, rang for the maid, and
+said:
+
+"My trunks! Please have them brought down--or up, from wherever they
+are, will you?"
+
+"Your trunks, miss!"
+
+"And a taxicab. I shall have to leave at once."
+
+"But--oh, I am sorry. Shall I help you pack?"
+
+"Thank you, no--yes--no!"
+
+The maid went out with eyes popping, wondering what earthquake had
+sent the guest home alone for such a headlong exit.
+
+Things flew in the drowsy house, and Marie Louise's chamber looked
+like the show-room of a commercial traveler for a linen-house when
+Polly appeared at the door and gasped:
+
+"What in the name of--I didn't know you were sick enough to be
+delirious!"
+
+She came forward through an archipelago of clothes to where Marie
+Louise was bending over a trunk. Polly took an armload of things away
+from her and put them back in the highboy. As she set her arms akimbo
+and stood staring at Marie Louise with a lovable and loving insolence,
+she heard the sound of a car rattling round the driveway, and her
+first words were:
+
+"Who's coming here at this hour?"
+
+"That's the taxi for me," Marie Louise explained.
+
+Polly turned to the maid, "Go down and send it away--no, tell the
+driver to go to the asylum for a strait-jacket."
+
+The maid smiled and left. Marie Louise was afraid to believe her own
+hopes.
+
+"You don't mean you want me to stay, do you--not after what that woman
+said?"
+
+"Do you imagine for a moment," returned Polly, "that I'd ever believe
+a word that cat could utter? Good Lord! if Lady Clifton-Wyatt told me
+it was raining and I could see it was, I'd know it wasn't and put down
+my umbrella."
+
+Marie Louise rejoiced at the trust implied, but she could not make a
+fool of so loyal a friend. She spoke with difficulty:
+
+"What if what she said was the truth, or, anyway, a kind of burlesque
+of it?"
+
+"Marie Louise!" Polly gasped, and plounced into a chair. "Tell me the
+truth this minute, the true truth."
+
+Marie Louise was perishing for a confidante. She had gone about as far
+without one as a normal woman can. She sat wondering how to begin,
+twirling her rings on her fingers. "Well, you see--you see--it is true
+that I'm not Sir Joseph's daughter. I was born in a little village--in
+America--Wakefield--out there in the Middle West. I ran away from
+home, and--"
+
+She hesitated, blanched, blushed, skipped over the years she tried not
+to think of and managed never to speak of. She came down to:
+
+"Well, anyway, at last I was in Berlin--on the stage--"
+
+"You were an actress?" Polly gasped.
+
+Marie Louise confessed, "Well, I'd hardly say that."
+
+She told Polly what she had told Mr. Verrinder of the appearance of
+Sir Joseph and Lady Webling, of their thrill at her resemblance to
+their dead daughter, of their plea that she leave the stage and enter
+their family, of her new life, and the outbreak of the war.
+
+Major Widdicombe pounded on the door and said: "Are you girls going to
+talk all night? I've got to get up at seven and save the country."
+
+Polly cried to him, "Go away," and to Marie Louise, "Go on."
+
+Marie Louise began again, but just as she reached the first suspicions
+of Sir Joseph's loyalty she remembered the oath she had plighted to
+Verrinder and stopped short.
+
+"I forgot! I can't!"
+
+Polly groaned: "Oh, my God! You're not going to stop there! I loathe
+serials."
+
+Marie Louise shook her head. "If only I could tell you; but I just
+can't! That's all; I can't!"
+
+Polly turned her eyes up in despair. "Well, I might as well go to bed,
+I suppose. But I sha'n't sleep a wink. Tell me one thing, though. You
+weren't really a German spy, were you?"
+
+"No, no! Of course not! I loathe everything German."
+
+"Well, let the rest rest, then. So long as Lady Clifton-Wyatt is a
+liar I can stand the strain. If you had been a spy, I suppose I'd have
+to shoot you or something; but so long as you're not, you don't budge
+out of this house. Is that understood?"
+
+Marie Louise nodded with a pathetic gratitude, and Polly stamped a
+kiss on her brow like a notarial seal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+The next morning's paper announced that spring had officially arrived
+and been recognized at the Capitol--a certain Senator had taken off
+his wig. Washington accepted this as the sure sign that the weather
+was warm. It would not be officially autumn till that wig fell back
+into place.
+
+There were less formal indications: for instance, the annual
+flower-duel between the two terraces on Massachusetts Avenue. The
+famous Embassy Terrace forsythias began it, and flaunted little
+fringes of yellow glory. The slopes of the Louise Home replied by
+setting their magnolia-trees on fire with flowers like lamps, flowers
+that hurried out ahead of their own leaves and then broke and covered
+the ground with great petals of shattered porcelain. The Embassy
+Terrace put out lamps of its own closer to the ground, but more
+gorgeous--irises in a row of blue, blue footlights.
+
+The Louise Home, where gentlewomen of better days, ambassadresses of
+an earlier régime, kept their state, had the last word, the word that
+could not be bettered, for it uttered wistaria, wistful lavender
+clusters weeping from the trellises in languorous grace.
+
+Marie Louise, looking from her open window in Rosslyn, felt in the
+wind a sense of stroking fingers. The trees were brisk with hope. The
+river went its way in a more sparkling flow. The air blew from the
+very fountains of youth with a teasing blarney. She thought of Ross
+Davidge and smiled tenderly to remember his amiable earnestness. But
+she frowned to remember his engagement with Lady Clifton-Wyatt. She
+wondered what excuse she could invent to checkmate that woman.
+
+Suddenly inspiration came to her. She remembered that she had
+forgotten to pay Davidge for the seat he surrendered her in the
+chair-car. She telephoned him at his hotel. He was out. She pursued
+him by wire travel till she found him in an office of the Shipping
+Board. He talked on the corner of a busy man's desk. She heard the
+busy man say with a taunting voice, "A lady for you, Davidge."
+
+She could hear the embarrassment in his voice. She was in for it now,
+and she felt silly when she explained why she bothered him. But she
+was stubborn, too. When he understood, he laughed with the constraint
+of a man bandying enforced gallantries on another man's telephone.
+
+"I'd hate to be as honest as all that."
+
+"It's not honesty," she persisted. "It's selfishness. I can't rest
+while the debt is on my mind."
+
+He was perplexed. "I've got to see several men on the Shipping Board.
+There's a big fight on between the wooden-ship fellows and the
+steel-ship men, and I'm betwixt and between 'em. I won't have time to
+run out to see you."
+
+"I shouldn't dream of asking you. I was coming in to town, anyway."
+
+"Oh! Well, then--well--er--when can I meet you?"
+
+"Whenever you say! The Willard at--When shall you be free?"
+
+"Not before four and then only for half an hour."
+
+"Four it is."
+
+"Fine! Thank you ever so much. I'll buy me a lot of steel with all
+that money you owe me."
+
+Marie Louise put up the receiver. People have got so used to the
+telephone that they can see by it. Marie Louise could visualize
+Davidge angry with embarrassment, confronting the important man whose
+office he had desecrated with this silly hammockese. She felt that she
+had made herself a nuisance and lost a trick. She had taken a deuce
+with her highest trump and had not captured the king.
+
+Furthermore, to keep Davidge from meeting Lady Clifton-Wyatt would be
+only to-day's battle. There would still be to-morrows and the
+day-afters. Lady Clifton-Wyatt had declared herself openly hostile to
+Marie Louise, and would get her sooner or later. Flight from
+Washington would be the only safety.
+
+But Marie Louise did not want to leave Washington. She loved
+Washington and the opportunities it offered a woman to do important
+work in the cosmopolitan whirl of its populace. But she could not live
+on at Polly Widdicombe's forever.
+
+Marie Louise decided that her hour had struck. She must find a nook of
+her own. And she would have to live in it all by herself. Who was
+there to live with? She felt horribly deserted in life. She had looked
+at numerous houses and apartments from time to time. Apartments were
+costlier and fewer than houses. Since she was doomed to live alone,
+anyway, she might as well have a house. Her neighbors would more
+easily be kept aloof.
+
+She sought a real-estate agent, Mr. Hailstorks, of the sort known as
+affable. But the dwellings he had to show were not even that. Places
+she had found not altogether odious before were rented now. Places
+that her heart went out to to-day proved to have been rented
+yesterday.
+
+Finally she ran across a residence of a sort. She sighed to Mr.
+Hailstorks:
+
+"Well, a carpenter made it--so let it pass for a house. I'll take it
+if it has a floor. I'm like Gelett Burgess: 'I don't so much care for
+a door, but this crawling around without touching the ground is
+getting to be quite a bore.'"
+
+"Yes, ma'am," said Mr. Hailstorks, bewilderedly.
+
+He unlocked the door of somebody's tenantless ex-home with its lonely
+furniture, and Marie Louise intruded, as one does, on the chairs,
+rugs, pictures, and vases that other people have been born with, have
+achieved, or have had thrust upon them. She wondered, as one does,
+what sort of beings they could have been that had selected such things
+to live among, and what excuse they had had for them.
+
+Mr. Hailstorks had a surprise in store for her. He led her to the rear
+of the house and raised a shade. Instead of the expectable back yard,
+Marie Louise was startled to see a noble landscape leap into view. The
+house loomed over a precipitous descent into a great valley. A stream
+ran far below, and then the cliffs rose again opposite in a succession
+of uplifting terraces that reminded her somehow of Richmond Hill
+superbly built up above the silver Thames.
+
+"Whatever is all that?" she cried.
+
+"Rock Creek Park, ma'am," said Mr. Hailstorks, who had a sincere
+real-estately affection for parks, since they raised the price of
+adjoining property and made renting easier.
+
+"And what's the price of all this grandeur?"
+
+"Only three hundred a month," said Mr. Hailstorks.
+
+"Only!" gasped Marie Louise.
+
+"It will be four hundred in a week or two--yes ma'am," said Mr.
+Hailstorks.
+
+So Marie Louise seized it before its price rose any farther.
+
+She took a last look at Rock Creek Park, henceforth her private
+game-preserve. As she stared, an idea came to her. She needed one. The
+park, it occurred to her, was an excellent wilderness to get lost
+in--with Ross Davidge.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+She was late to her meeting with Davidge--not unintentionally. He was
+waiting on the steps of the hotel, smoking, when she drove up in the
+car she had bought for her Motor Corps work.
+
+He said what she hoped he would say:
+
+"I didn't know you drove so well."
+
+She quoted a popular phrase: "'You don't know the half of it, dearie.'
+Hop in, and I'll show you."
+
+He thought of Lady Clifton-Wyatt, and Marie Louise knew he thought of
+her. But he was not hero or coward enough to tell a woman that he had
+an engagement with another woman. She pretended to have forgotten that
+he had told her, though she could think of little else. She whisked
+round the corner of I Street, or Eye Street, and thence up Sixteenth
+Street, fast and far.
+
+She was amazed at her own audacity, and Davidge could not make her
+out. She had a scared look that puzzled him. She was really thinking
+that she was the most unconscionable kidnapper that ever ran off with
+some other body's child. He could hardly dun her for the money, and
+she had apparently forgotten it again.
+
+They were well to the north when she said:
+
+"Do you know Rock Creek Park?"
+
+"No, I've never been in it."
+
+"Would you like a glimpse? I think it's the prettiest park in the
+world."
+
+She looked at her watch with that twist of the wrist now becoming
+almost universal and gasped:
+
+"Oh, dear! I must turn back. But it's just about as short to go
+through the park. I mustn't make you late to Lady Clifton-Wyatt's
+tea."
+
+He could find absolutely nothing to say to that except, "It's mighty
+pretty along here." She turned into Blagdon Road and coasted down the
+long, many-turning dark glade. At the end she failed to steer to the
+south. The creek itself crossed the road. She drove the car straight
+through its lilting waters. There was exhilaration in the splashing
+charge across the ford. Then the road wound along the bank, curling
+and writhing with it gracefully through thick forests, over bridges
+and once more right through the bright flood. The creek scrambling
+among its piled-up boulders was too gay to suggest any amorous mood,
+and Marie Louise did not quite dare to drive the car down to the
+water's edge at any of the little green plateaus where picnics were
+being celebrated on the grass.
+
+"I always lose my way in this park," she said. "I expect I'm lost
+now."
+
+She began to regret Davidge's approaching absence, with a strange
+loneliness. He was becoming tenderly necessary to her. She sighed,
+hardly meaning to speak aloud, "Too bad you're going away so soon."
+
+He was startled to find that his departure meant something to her. He
+spoke with an affectionate reassurance.
+
+She stopped the car on a lofty plateau where several ladies and
+gentlemen were exercising their horses at hurdle-jumping. The élan of
+rush, plunge and recovery could not excite Mamise now.
+
+"I'll tell you what we'll do. The next time I come to Washington you
+drive me over to my shipyard and I'll show you the new boat and the
+new yard for the rest of the flock."
+
+"That would be glorious. I should like to know something about
+ships."
+
+"I can teach you all I know in a little while."
+
+"You know all there is to know, don't you?"
+
+"Lord help us, I should say not! I knew a little about the old
+methods, but they're all done away with. The fabricated ship is an
+absolute novelty. The old lines are gone, and the old methods. What
+few ship-builders we had are trying to forget what they know.
+Everybody is green. We had to find out for ourselves and pass it along
+to the foremen, and they hand it out to the laborers.
+
+"The whole art is in a confusion. There is going to be a ghastly lot
+of mistakes and waste and scandal, but if we win out there'll be such
+a cloudburst that the Germans will think it's raining ships. Niagara
+Falls will be nothing to the cascade of iron hulls going overboard.
+Von Tirpitz with his ruthless policy will be like the old woman who
+tried to sweep the tide back with a broom."
+
+He grew so fervent in his vision of the new creation that he hardly
+saw the riders as they stormed the hurdles. Marie Louise took fire
+from his glow and forgot the petty motive that had impelled her to
+bring him to this place. Suddenly he realized how shamelessly eloquent
+he had been, and subsided with a slump.
+
+"What a bore I am to tell all this to a woman!"
+
+She rose at that. "The day has passed when a man can apologize for
+talking business to a woman. I've been in England for years, you know,
+and the women over there are doing all the men's work and getting
+better wages at it than the men ever did. After the war they'll never
+go back to their tatting and prattle. I'm going to your shipyard and
+have a look-in, but not the way a pink debutante follows a naval
+officer over a battle-ship, staring at him and not at the works. I'm
+going on business, and if I like ship-building, I may take it up."
+
+"Great!" he laughed, and slapped her hand where it lay on the wheel.
+He apologized again for his roughness.
+
+"I'll forgive anything except an apology," she said.
+
+As she looked proudly down at the hand he had honored with a blow as
+with an accolade she saw by her watch that it was after six.
+
+"Great Heavens! it's six and more!" she cried. "Lady Clifton-Wyatt
+will never forgive you--or me. I'll take you to her at once."
+
+"Never mind Lady Clifton-Wyatt," he said. "But I've got another
+engagement for dinner--with a man, at half past six. I wish I
+hadn't."
+
+They were drifting with the twilight into an elegiac mood, suffering
+the sweet sorrow of parting.
+
+The gloaming steeped the dense woods, and the romance of sunset and
+gathering night saddened the business man's soul, but wakened a new
+and unsuspected woman in Marie Louise.
+
+Her fierce imaginations were suddenly concerned with conquests of
+ambition, not of love. So fresh a realm was opened to her that she was
+herself renewed and restored to that boyish-girlish estate of young
+womanhood before love has educated it to desire and the slaveries of
+desire. The Aphrodite that lurks in every woman had been put to flight
+by the Diana that is also there.
+
+Davidge on the other hand had warmed toward Marie Louise suddenly, as
+he saw how ardent she could be. He had known her till now only in her
+dejected and terrified, distracted humors. Now he saw her on fire, and
+love began to blaze within him.
+
+He felt his first impulse to throw an arm about her and draw her to
+his breast, but though the solitude was complete and the opportunity
+perfect, he saw that she was in no spirit for dalliance. There is no
+colder chaperon for a woman than a new ambition to accomplish
+something worth while.
+
+As they drew up at the New Willard she was saying:
+
+"Telephone the minute you come to town again. Good-by. I'm late to
+dinner."
+
+She meant that she was late to life, late to a career.
+
+Davidge stared at her in wonderment as she bent to throw the lever
+into first speed. She roughed it in her impatience, and the growl of
+the gear drowned the sound of another man's voice calling her name.
+This man ran toward her, but she did not notice him and got away
+before he could overtake her.
+
+Davidge was jostled by him as he ran, and noted that he called Miss
+Webling "Mees Vapelink." The Teutonic intonation did not fall
+pleasantly on the American ear at that time. Washington was a
+forbidden city to Germanic men and soon would banish the enemy women,
+too.
+
+The stranger took refuge on the sidewalk, and his curses were snarly
+with the Teutonic _r_. Davidge studied him and began to remember him.
+He had seen him with Marie Louise somewhere. Suddenly his mind,
+ransacking the filing-cabinet of his memory, turned up a picture of
+Nicky Easton at the side of Marie Louise at the dinner in Sir Joseph's
+home. He could not remember the name, but a man has a ready label for
+anybody he hates.
+
+He began to worry now. Who was this spick foreigner who ran hooting
+after her? It was not like Davidge to be either curious or suspicious.
+But love was beginning its usual hocus-pocus with character and
+turning a tired business man into a restless swain.
+
+Davidge resented Easton's claim on Marie Louise, whatever it was, as
+an invasion of some imagined property right of his own, or at least of
+some option he had secured somehow. He was alarmed at the Teutonic
+accent of the interloper. He began to take heed of how little he knew
+of Marie Louise, after all. He recalled Sir Joseph Webling's German
+accent. An icy fear chilled him.
+
+His important business parley was conducted with an absent-mindedness
+that puzzled his host, the eminent iron-master, Jacob Cruit, who had
+exchanged an income of a million a year and dictatorial powers for a
+governmental wage of one dollar per annum, no authority, no gratitude,
+and endless trouble.
+
+Davidge's head was buzzing with thoughts in which Cruit had no part:
+
+"Can she be one of those horrible women who have many lovers? Is she a
+woman of affairs? What is all this mystery about her? What was she so
+afraid of the night she would not stop at Mrs. Widdicombe's? Why was
+she so upset by the appearance of Lady Clifton-Wyatt? Why was she in
+such a hurry to get me away from Mrs. Prothero's dinner, and to keep
+me from keeping my engagement with Lady Clifton-Wyatt? Why so much
+German association?"
+
+He thought of dozens of explanations, most of them wild, but none of
+them so wild as the truth--that Marie Louise was cowering under the
+accusation of being a German agent.
+
+He resolved that he would forget Marie Louise, discharge her from the
+employment of his thoughts. Yet that night as he lay cooking in his
+hot berth he thought of Marie Louise instead of ships. None of his
+riot of thoughts was so fantastic as the fact that she was even then
+thinking of ships and not of him.
+
+That night Marie Louise ransacked the library that the owner of
+Grinden Hall had left with the other furniture. Some member of the
+family had been a cadet at Annapolis, and his old text-books littered
+the shelves. Marie Louise selected and bore away an armload, not of
+novels, but of books whose very backs had repelled her before. They
+were the very latest romance to her now.
+
+The authors of _An Elementary Manual for the Deviation of the
+Compass in Iron Ships_, _The Marine Steam-engine_, and _An Outline
+of Ship-building_, _Theoretical and Practical_, could hardly have
+dreamed that their works would one night go up-stairs in the embrace
+of a young woman's arms. The books would have struck a naval architect
+as quaintly old-fashioned, but to Marie Louise they were as full of
+news as the latest evening extra. The only one she could understand
+with ease was Captain Samuels's _From the Forecastle to the
+Cabin_, and she was thrilled by his account of the struggles of his
+youth, his mutinies, his champion of the Atlantic, the semi-clipper
+_Dreadnaught_, but most of all, by his glowing picture of the decay of
+American marine glory.
+
+She read till she could sit up no longer. Then she undressed and
+dressed for sleep, snapped on the reading-lamp, and took up another
+book, Bowditch's _American Navigation_. It was the "Revised Edition of
+1883," but it was fresh sensation to her. She lay prone like the
+reading Magdalen in the picture, her hair pouring down over her
+shoulders, her bosom pillowed on the volume beneath her eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Passengers arriving at Washington in the early morning may keep their
+cubbyholes until seven, no later. By half past seven they must be off
+the car. Jake Nuddle was an ugly riser. He had always regarded the
+alarm-clock as the most hateful of all the inventions of capitalists
+to enslave the poor. Jake had strange ideas of capitalists, none
+stranger than that they are luxurious persons who sleep late and knock
+off work early.
+
+Waking Jake was one of the most dangerous of his wife's prerogatives.
+On this morning, if he had been awaker he would have bitten off the
+black hand that reached into his berth and twitched the sheet at seven
+of a non-working day. The voice that murmured appealingly through the
+curtains, "S'em o'clock, please!" did not please Jake at all.
+
+He cursed his annoying and nudging wife a few times heartily, then
+began to make his acutely unbeautiful toilet. In the same small
+wheeled hotel capitalists, statesmen, matrons, and misses were
+dressing in quarters just as strait. Jake and his wife had always got
+in each other's way, but never more cumbersomely than now. Jake found
+his wife's stockings when he sought his socks. Her corset-strings
+seemed to be everywhere. Whatever he laid hold of brought along her
+corset. He thrust his head and arms into something white and came out
+of it sputtering:
+
+"That's your damned shimmy. Where's my damned shirt?"
+
+Somehow they made it at last, got dressed and washed somehow and left
+the caravansary. Mrs. Nuddle carried the heavier baggage. They had
+breakfast at the lunch-counter; then they went out and looked at the
+Capitol. It inspired in Jake's heart no national reverence. He said to
+his awestruck wife:
+
+"There's where that gang of robbers, the Congersmen, meet and agree
+on their hold-ups. They're all the hirelings of the capitalists.
+
+"They voted for this rotten war without consulting the people. They
+didn't dare consult 'em. They knew the people wasn't in favor of no
+such crime. But the Congersmen get their orders from Wall Street, and
+them brokers wanted the war because they owned so much stock that
+wouldn't be worth the paper it was printed on unless the United States
+joined the Allies and collected for 'em off Germany."
+
+It was thus that Jake and his kind regarded the avalanche of
+horrific woe that German ambition spilled upon the world and kept
+rolling down from the mountain-tops of heaped-up munitions. It was
+thus that they contemplated the mangled villages of innocent Belgium,
+the slavery-drives in the French towns, the windrows of British
+dead, the increasing lust of conquest, which grew by what it fed
+on, till at last America, driven frantic by the endless carnage,
+took up belatedly the gigantic task of throwing back the avalanche
+across the mountain to the other side before it engulfed and
+ruined the world. While Europe agonized in torments unthinkable,
+immeasurable, and yet mysteriously endurable only because there
+was no escape visible, the Jake Nuddles, illiterate and literate,
+croaked their batrachian protest against capital, bewailed the lot
+of imaginary working-men, and belied the life of real working-men.
+
+Staring at the Capitol, which means so much nobility to him who has
+the nobility to understand the dream that raised it, he burlesqued its
+ideals. Cruel, corrupt, lazy, and sloven of soul, he found there what
+he knew best because it was his own. Aping a sympathy he could not
+feel, he grew maudlin:
+
+"So they drag our poor boys from their homes in droves and send 'em
+off to the slaughter-house in France--all for money! Anything to grind
+down the honest workman into the dust, no matter how many mothers'
+hearts they break!"
+
+Jake was one of those who never express sympathy for anybody except in
+the course of a tirade against somebody else. He had small use for
+wives, mothers, or children except as clubs to pound rich men with.
+His wife, who knew him all too well, was not impressed by his
+eloquence. Her typical answer to his typical tirade was, "I wonder how
+on earth we're goin' to find Mamise."
+
+Jake groaned at the anticlimax to his lofty flight, but he realized
+that the main business before the house was what his wife propounded.
+
+He remembered seeing an Information Bureau sign in the station. He had
+learned from the newspaper in which he had seen Mamise's picture that
+she was visiting Major Widdicombe. He had written the name down on the
+tablets of his memory, and his first plan was to find Major
+Widdicombe. Jake had a sort of wolfish cunning in tracing people he
+wanted to meet. He could always find anybody who might lend him money.
+He had mysterious difficulties in tracing some one who could give him
+work.
+
+He left his wife to simmer in the station while he set forth on a
+scouting expedition. After much travel he found at last the office of
+the Ordnance Department, in which Major Widdicombe toiled, and he
+appeared at length at Major Widdicombe's desk.
+
+Jake was cautious. He would not state his purpose. He hardly dared to
+claim relationship with Miss Webling until he was positive that she
+was his sister-in-law. Noting Jake's evasiveness, the Major discreetly
+evaded the request for his guest's address. He would say no more
+than:
+
+"Miss Webling is coming down to lunch with me at the--that is with my
+wife. I'll tell her you're looking for her; if she wants to meet you,
+I'll tell you, if you come back here."
+
+"All right, mucher bliged," said Jake. Baffled and without further
+recourse, he left the Major's presence, since there seemed to be
+nothing else to do. But once outside, he felt that there had been
+something highly unsatisfactory about the parley. He decided to
+imitate Mary's little lamb and to hang about the building till the
+Major should appear. In an hour or two he was rewarded by seeing
+Widdicombe leave the door and step into an automobile. Jake heard him
+tell the driver, "The Shoreham."
+
+Jake walked to the hotel and saw Marie Louise seated at a table by a
+window. He recognized her by her picture and was duly triumphant. He
+was ready to advance and demand recognition. Then he realized that he
+could make no claim on her without his awful wife's corroboration. He
+took a street-car back to the station and found his nominal helpmeet
+sitting just where he had left her.
+
+Abbie had bought no newspaper, book, or magazine to while away the
+time with. She was not impatient of idleness. It was luxury enough
+just not to be warshin' clo'es, cookin' vittles, or wrastlin' dishes.
+She took a dreamy content in studying the majesty of the architecture,
+but her interest in it was about that of a lizard basking on a fallen
+column in a Greek peristyle. It was warm and spacious and nobody
+disturbed her drowsy beatitude.
+
+When Jake came and summoned her she rose like a rheumatic old
+househound and obeyed her master's voice.
+
+Jake gave her such a vote of confidence as was implied in letting her
+lug the luggage. It was cheaper for her to carry it than for him to
+store it in the parcel-room. It caused the fellow-passengers in the
+street-car acute inconvenience, but Jake was superior to public
+opinion of his wife. In such a homely guise did the fates approach
+Miss Webling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+The best place for a view is in one's back yard; then it is one's own.
+If it is in the front yard, then the house is only part of the
+public's view.
+
+In London Marie Louise had lived at Sir Joseph Webling's home, its
+gray, fog-stained, smoked-begrimed front flush with the pavement. But
+back of the house was a high-walled garden with a fountain that never
+played. There was a great rug of English-green grass, very green all
+winter and still greener all summer. At an appropriate spot was a
+tree; a tea-table sat under it; in blossom-time it sprinkled pink
+petals on the garden hats of the women; and on the grass they fell, to
+twist Tennyson, softlier than tired eyelids on tired eyes.
+
+So Marie Louise adored her new home with its unpromising entrance and
+its superb surprise from the rear windows. When she broke the news to
+Polly Widdicombe, that she was leaving her, they had a good fight over
+it. Yet Polly could hardly insist that Marie Louise stay with her
+forever, especially when Marie Louise had a perfectly good home of her
+own.
+
+Polly went along for a morning of reconstruction work. There were
+pictures, chairs, cushions, and knickknacks that simply had to be
+hidden away. The original tenants evidently had the theory that a bare
+space on a wall or a table was as indecent as on a person's person.
+
+They had taken crude little chromos and boxed them in gaudy frames,
+many of whose atrocities were aggravated by panels of plush of a color
+that could hardly be described by any other name than fermented prune.
+Over the corner of these they had thrown "throws" or drapes of
+malicious magenta horribly figured in ruthless incompatibilities.
+
+Chairs of unexplainable framework were upholstered with fabrics of
+studied delirium. Every mantel was an exhibit of models of what not to
+do. When Henry James said that Americans had no end of taste, but most
+of it was bad, he must have based his conclusions on such a
+conglomerate as this.
+
+Polly and Marie Louise found some of the furniture bad enough to be
+amusing. But they toted a vanload of it into closets and storerooms.
+Where the pictures came away they left staring spaces of unfaded
+wall-paper. Still, they were preferable to the pictures.
+
+By noon the women were exhausted. They washed their dust-smutted hands
+and faces and exclaimed upon the black water they left. But the
+exercise had given them appetite, and when Marie Louise locked the
+front door she felt all the comfort of a householder. She had a home
+of her very own to lock up, and though she had roamed through
+pleasures and palaces, she agreed that, be it ever so horrible,
+there's no place like home.
+
+She and Polly were early to their luncheon engagement with Major
+Widdicombe. Their appetites disputed the clock. Polly decided to
+telephone her husband for Heaven's sake to come at once to her
+rescue.
+
+While Polly was telephoning Marie Louise sat waiting on a divan. Her
+muscles were so tired that she grew nearly as placidly animal as her
+sister in the Pennsylvania Station. She was as different in every
+other way as possible. Her life, her environment, her ambitions, had
+been completely alien to anything Mrs. Nuddle had known. She had been
+educated and evolved by entirely different joys and sorrows, fears and
+successes.
+
+Mrs. Nuddle had been afraid that her husband would beat her again, or
+kill one of the children in his rage, or get himself sent to prison or
+to the chair; Mrs. Nuddle had been afraid that the children would be
+run over in the street, would pull a boilerful of boiling water over
+onto them, or steal, or go wrong in any of the myriad ways that
+children have of going wrong. Mrs. Nuddle's ecstasies were a job well
+done, a word of praise from a customer, a chance to sit down, an
+interval without pain or worry when her children were asleep, or when
+her husband was working and treating her as well as one treats an old
+horse.
+
+Of such was the kingdom of Mrs. Nuddle.
+
+Marie Louise had dwelt in a world no more and no less harrowing, but
+infinitely unlike. The two sisters were no longer related to each
+other by any ties except blood kinship. Mrs. Nuddle was a good woman
+gone wrong, Marie Louise a goodish woman gone variously; Mrs. Nuddle a
+poor advertisement of a life spent in honest toil, early rising, early
+bedding, churchgoing, and rigid economy; Marie Louise a most
+attractive evidence of how much depends on a careful carriage, a
+cultivated taste in clothes, and an elegant acquaintance.
+
+At last, after years of groping toward each other, the sisters were to
+be brought together. But there was to be an intervention. Even while
+Marie Louise sat relaxed in a fatigue that she would have called
+contentment trouble was stealing toward her.
+
+The spider who came and sat beside this Miss Muffet was Nicky Easton.
+He frightened her, but he would not let her run away.
+
+As he dropped to her side she rose with a gasp, but he pressed her
+back with a hasty grip on her arm and a mandatory prayer:
+
+"Wait once, pleass."
+
+The men who had shadowed Marie Louise had months before given her up
+as hopelessly correct. But guardian angels were still provided for
+Nicky Easton; and one of them, seeing this meeting, took Marie Louise
+back into the select coterie of the suspects.
+
+There's no cure for your bodily aches and pains like terror. It lifts
+the paralytic from his bed, makes the lame scurry, and gives the blind
+eyes enough for running. Marie Louise's fatigue fell from her like a
+burden whose straps are slit.
+
+When Nicky said: "I could not find you in New York. Now we are here we
+can have a little talkink," she stammered: "Not here! Not now!"
+
+"Why not, pleass?"
+
+"I have an engagement--a friend--she has just gone to telephone a
+moment."
+
+"You are ashamed of me, then?"
+
+She let him have it. "Yes!"
+
+He winced at the slap in the face.
+
+She went on: "Besides, she knows you. Her husband is an officer in the
+army. I can't talk to you here."
+
+"Where, then, and when?"
+
+"Any time--any place--but here."
+
+"Any time is no time. You tell me, or I stay now."
+
+"Come to--to my house."
+
+"You have a howiss, then?"
+
+"Yes. I just took it to-day. I shall be there this afternoon--at
+three, if you will go."
+
+"Very goot. The address is--"
+
+She gave it; he repeated it, mumbled, "At sree o'clock I am there,"
+and glided away just as Polly returned.
+
+They were eating a consommé madrilène when the Major arrived. He
+dutifully ate what his wife had selected for him, and listened amiably
+to what she had to tell him about her morning, though he was bursting
+to tell her about his. Polly made a vivid picture of Marie Louise's
+new home, ending with:
+
+"Everything on God's earth in it except a piano and a book."
+
+This reminded Marie Louise of the books she had read on ship-building,
+and she asked if she might borrow them. Polly made a woeful face at
+this.
+
+"My dear! When a woman starts to reading up on a subject a man is
+interested in, she's lost--and so is he. Beware of it, my dear."
+
+Tom demurred: "Go right on, Marie Louise, so that you can take an
+intelligent interest in what your husband is working on."
+
+"My husband!" said Marie Louise. "Aren't you both a trifle premature?"
+
+Polly went glibly on: "Don't listen to Tom, my dear. What does he know
+about what a man wants his wife to take an intelligent interest in?
+Once a woman knows about her husband's business, he's finished with
+her and ready for the next. Tom's been trying to tell me for ten years
+what he's working at, and I haven't the faintest idea yet. It always
+gives him something to hope for. When he comes home of evenings he can
+always say, 'Perhaps to-night's the night when she'll listen.' But
+once you listen intelligently and really understand, he's through with
+you, and he'll quit you for some pink-cheeked ignoramus who hasn't
+heard about it yet."
+
+Marie Louise, being a woman, knew how to get her message to another
+woman; the way seems to be to talk right through her talk. The acute
+creatures have ears to hear with and mouths to talk with, and they
+apparently find no difficulty in using both at the same time.
+Somewhere along about the middle of Polly's discourse Marie Louise
+began to answer it before it was finished. Why should she wait when
+she knew what was coming? So she said contemporaneously and
+covocally:
+
+"But I'm not going to marry a ship-builder, my dear. Don't be absurd!
+I'm not planning to take an intelligent interest in Mr. Davidge's
+business. I'm planning to take an intelligent interest in my own. I'm
+going to be a ship-builder myself, and I want to learn the A B C's."
+
+They finished that argument at the same time and went on together down
+the next stretch in a perfect team:
+
+"Oh, well of course, if            "Mr. Davidge tells me,"
+that's the case," asserted         Marie Louise explained, "that
+Polly, "then you're quite          women are needed in ship-
+crazy--unless you're simply        building, and that anybody
+hunting for a new sensation.       can learn. In fact, every-
+And on that score I'll admit       body has to, anyway; so
+that it sounds rather interest-    I've got as good a chance as
+ing. I may take a whack at         a man. I'm as strong as a
+it myself. I'm quite fed up        horse. Fine! Come along,
+on bandages and that sort of       and we'll build a U-boat
+thing. Get me a job in the         chaser together. Mr. Davidge
+same factory or whatever           would be delighted to
+they call it. Will you?"           have you, I'm sure."
+
+This was arrant hubbub to the mere man who was not capable of carrying
+on a conversation except by the slow, primitive methods of Greek
+drama, strophe and antistrophe, one talking while the other listened,
+then _vice versa_.
+
+So he had time to remember that he had something to remember, and to
+dig it up. He broke in on the dialogue:
+
+"By the way, that reminds me, Marie Louise. There's a man in town
+looking for you."
+
+"Looking for me!" Marie Louise gasped, alert as an antelope at once.
+"What was his name?"
+
+"I can't seem to recall it. I'll have it in a minute. He didn't
+impress me very favorably, so I didn't tell him you were living with
+us."
+
+Polly turned on Tom: "Come along, you poor nut! I hate riddles, and so
+does Marie Louise."
+
+"That's it!" Tom cried. "_Riddle--Nuddle_. His name is Nuddle. Do you
+know a man named Nuddle?"
+
+The name conveyed nothing to Marie Louise except a suspicion that Mr.
+Verrinder had chosen some pseudonym.
+
+"What was his nationality?" she asked. "English?"
+
+"I should say not! He was as Amurrican as a piece of pungkin pie."
+
+Marie Louise felt a little relieved, but still at sea. When Widdicombe
+asked what message he should take back her curiosity led her to brave
+her fate and know the worst:
+
+"Tell him to come to my house at any time this afternoon--no, not
+before five. I have some shopping to do, and the servants to engage."
+
+She did not ask Polly to go with her, and Polly took the hint conveyed
+in Marie Louise's remark as they left the dining-room, "I've a little
+telephoning to do."
+
+Polly went her way, and Marie Louise made a pretext of telephoning.
+
+Major Widdicombe did not see Jake Nuddle as he went down the steps,
+for the reason that Jake saw him first and drew his wife aside. He
+wondered what had become of Marie Louise.
+
+Jake and his wife hung about nonplussed for a few minutes, till Marie
+Louise came out. She had waited only to make sure that Tom and Polly
+got away. When she came down the steps she cast a casual glance at
+Jake and her sister, who came toward her eagerly. But she assumed that
+they were looking at some one else, for they meant nothing to her
+eyes.
+
+She had indeed never seen this sister before. The sister who waddled
+toward her was not the sister she had left in Wakefield years before.
+That sister was young and lean and a maid. Marriage and hard work and
+children had swaddled this sister in bundles of strange flesh and
+drawn the face in new lines.
+
+Marie Louise turned her back on her, but heard across her shoulder the
+poignant call:
+
+"Mamise!"
+
+That voice was the same. It had not lost its own peculiar cry, and
+it reverted the years and altered the scene like a magician's
+"Abracadabra!"
+
+Marie Louise swung round just in time to receive the full brunt of her
+sister's charge. The repeated name identified the strange-looking
+matron as the girl grown old, and Marie Louise gathered her into her
+arms with a fierce homesickness. Her loneliness had found what it
+needed. She had kinfolk now, and she sobbed: "Abbie darling! My
+darling Abbie!" while Abbie wept: "Mamise! Oh, my poor little
+Mamise!"
+
+A cluster of cab-drivers wondered what it was all about, but Jake
+Nuddle felt triumphant. Marie Louise looked good to him as he
+looked her over, and for the nonce he was content to have the slim,
+round fashionable creature enveloped in his wife's arms for a
+sister-in-law.
+
+Abbie, a little homelier than ever with her face blubbery and
+tear-drenched, turned to introduce what she had drawn in the
+matrimonial lottery.
+
+"Mamise!" she said. "I want you should meet my husbin'."
+
+"I'm delighted!" said Mamise, before she saw her sister's fate. She
+was thorough-trained if not thorough-born, and she took the shock
+without reeling.
+
+Jake's hand was not as rough so it ought to have been, and his
+cordiality was sincere as he growled:
+
+"Pleaster meecher, Mamise."
+
+He was ready already with her first name, but she had nothing to call
+him by. It never occurred to Abbie that her sister would not
+instinctively know a name so familiar to Mrs. Nuddle as Mr. Nuddle,
+and it was a long while before Marie Louise managed to pick it up and
+piece it together.
+
+Her embarrassment at meeting Jake was complete. She asked:
+
+"Where are you living--here in Washington?"
+
+"Laws, no!" said Abbie; and that reminded her of the bundles she had
+dropped at the sight of Mamise. They had played havoc with the
+sidewalk traffic, but she hurried to regain them.
+
+Jake could be the gentleman when there was somebody looking who
+counted. So he checked his wife with amazement at the preposterousness
+of her carrying bundles while Sir Walter Raleigh was at hand. He
+picked them up and brought them to Marie Louise's feet, disgusted at
+the stupid amazement of his wife, who did not have sense enough to
+conceal it. Marie Louise was growing alarmed at the perfect plebeiance
+of her kith. She was unutterably ashamed of herself for noticing such
+things, but the eye is not to blame for what it can't help seeing, nor
+the ear for what is forced upon it. She had a feeling that the first
+thing to do was to get her sister in out of the rain of glances from
+the passers-by.
+
+"You must come to me at once," she said. "I've just taken a house.
+I've got no servants in yet, and you'll have to put up with it as it
+is."
+
+Abbie gasped at the "servants." She noted the authority with which
+Marie Louise beckoned a chauffeur and pointed to the bundles, which he
+hastened to seize.
+
+Abbie was overawed by the grandeur of her first automobile and showed
+it on her face. She saw many palaces on the way and expected Marie
+Louise to stop at any of them. When the car drew up at Marie Louise's
+home Abbie was bitterly disappointed; but when she got inside she
+found her dream of paradise. Marie Louise was distressed at Abbie's
+loud praise of the general effect and her unfailing instinct for
+picking out the worst things on the walls or the floors. This distress
+caused a counter-distress of self-rebuke.
+
+Jake was on his dignity at first, but finally he unbent enough to take
+off his coat, hang it over a chair, and stretch himself out on a divan
+whose ulterior maroon did not disturb his repose in the least.
+
+"This is what I call something like," he said; and then, "And now,
+Mamise, set in and tell us all about yourself."
+
+This was the last thing Mamise wanted to do, and she evaded with a
+plea:
+
+"I can wait. I want to hear all about you, Abbie darling. How are you,
+and how long have you been married, and where do you live?"
+
+"Goin' on eight years come next October, and we got three childern. I
+been right poorly lately. Don't seem to take as much interest in
+worshin' as I useter."
+
+"Washing!" Marie Louise exclaimed. "You don't wash, do you? That is, I
+mean to say--professionally?"
+
+"Yes, I worsh. Do right smart of work, too."
+
+Marie Louise was overwhelmed. She had a hundred thousand dollars, and
+her sister was a--washerwoman! It was intolerable. She glanced at
+Jake.
+
+"But Mr.--your husband--"
+
+"Oh, Jake, he works--off and on. But he ain't got what you might call
+a hankerin' for it. He can take work or let it alone. I can't say as
+much for him when it comes to licker. Fact is, some the women say,
+'Why, Mrs. Nuddle, how do you ever--'"
+
+"Your name isn't--it isn't Nuddle, is it?" Marie Louise broke in.
+
+"Sure it is. What did you think it was?"
+
+So the sleeping brother-in-law was the mysterious inquirer. That
+solved one of her day's puzzles and solved it very tamely. So many of
+life's mysteries, like so many of fiction's, peter out at the end.
+They don't sustain.
+
+Marie Louise still belonged to the obsolescent generation that
+believed it a husband's duty to support his wife by his own labor. The
+thought of her sister supporting a worthless husband by her own toil
+was odious. The first task was to get Jake to work. It was only
+natural that she should think of her own new mania.
+
+She spoke so eagerly that she woke Jake when she said: "I have it! Why
+doesn't your husband go in for ship-building?"
+
+Marie Louise told him about Davidge and what Davidge had said of the
+need of men. She was sure that she could get him a splendid job, and
+that Mr. Davidge would do anything for her.
+
+Jake was about to rebuke such impudence as it deserved, but a thought
+struck him, and he chewed it over. Among the gang of idealists he
+consorted with, or at least salooned with, the dearest ambition of all
+was to turn America's dream of a vast fleet of ships into a nightmare
+of failure. In order to secure "just recognition" for the workman they
+would cause him to be recognized as both a loafer and a traitor--that
+was their ideal of labor.
+
+As Marie Louise with unwitting enthusiasm rhapsodized over the
+shipyard Jake's interest kindled. To get into a shipyard just growing,
+and spread his doctrines among the men as they came in, to bring off
+strikes and to play tricks with machinery everywhere, to wreck
+launching-ways so that hulls that escaped all other attacks would
+crack through and stick--it was a Golconda of opportunities for this
+modern conquistador. He could hardly keep his face straight till he
+heard Marie Louise out. He fooled her entirely with his ardor; and
+when he asked, "Do you think your gentleman friend, this man Davidge,
+would really give me a job?" she cried, with more enthusiasm than
+tact:
+
+"I know he would. He'd give anybody a job. Besides, I'm going to take
+one myself. And, Abbie honey, what would you say to your becoming a
+ship-builder, too? It would be immensely easier and pleasanter than
+washing clothes."
+
+Before Abbie could recover the breath she lost at the picture of
+herself as a builder of ships the door-bell rang. Abbie peeked and
+whispered:
+
+"It's a man."
+
+"Do you suppose it's that feller Davidge?" said Jake.
+
+"No, it's--it's--somebody else," said Marie Louise, who knew who it
+was without looking.
+
+She was at her wit's end now. Nicky Easton was at the door, and a
+sister and a brother-in-law whose existence she had not suspected were
+in the parlor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+If anything is anybody's very own, it is surely his past, or
+hers--particularly hers. But Nicky Easton was bringing one of the most
+wretched chapters of Marie Louise's past to her very door. She did not
+want to reopen it, especially not before her new-found family. One
+likes to have a few illusions left for these reunions. So she said:
+
+"Abbie darling, would you forgive me if I saw this--person alone?
+Besides, you'll be wanting to get settled in your room, if Mr.--Ja--your
+husband doesn't mind taking your things up."
+
+Abbie had not been used to taking dismissals graciously. She had never
+been to court and been permitted to retire. Besides, people who know
+how to take an eviction gracefully usually know enough to get out
+before they are put out. But Abbie had to be pushed, and she went,
+heartbroken, disgraced, resentful. Jake sulked after her. They moved
+like a couple of old flea-bitten mongrels spoken to sharply.
+
+And of course they stole back to the head of the stairs and listened.
+
+Nicky had his face made up for a butler, or at least a maid. When he
+saw Marie Louise he had to undo his features, change his opening
+oration, and begin all over again.
+
+"It is zhoo yourself, then," he said.
+
+"Yes. Come in, do. I have no servants yet."
+
+"Ah!" he cooed, encouraged at once.
+
+She squelched his hopes. "My sister and her husband are here,
+however."
+
+This astounded him so that he spoke in two languages at once: "Your
+schwister! Since how long do you have a sester? And where did you
+get?"
+
+"I have always had her, but we haven't seen each other for years."
+
+He gasped, "_Was Sie nicht sagen_!"
+
+"And if you wouldn't mind not talking German--"
+
+"_Recht so_. Excuse. Do I come in--no?"
+
+She stepped back, and he went into the drawing-room. He smiled at what
+he saw, and was polite, if cynical.
+
+"You rent foornished?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He waved her to a chair so that he might sit down.
+
+"_Was giebt's neues_--er--what is the noose?"
+
+"I have none. What is yours?"
+
+"You mean you do not wish to tell. If I should commence once, I should
+never stop. But we are both alife yet. That is always somethink. I was
+never so nearly not."
+
+Marie Louise could not withhold the protest:
+
+"You saved yourself by betraying your friends."
+
+"Well, I telled--I told only what the English knew already. If they
+let me go for it, it was no use to kill everybody, should I?"
+
+He was rather miserable about it, for he could see that she despised
+him more for being an informer than for having something to inform. He
+pleaded in extenuation:
+
+"But I shall show how usefool I can be to my country. Those English
+shall be sorry to let me go, and my people glad. And so shall you."
+
+She studied him, and dreaded him, loathing his claim on her, longing
+to order him never to speak again to her, yet strangely interested in
+his future power for evil. The thought occurred to her that if she
+could learn his new schemes she might thwart them. That would be some
+atonement for what she had not prevented before. This inspiration
+brightened her so suddenly and gave such an eagerness to her manner
+that he saw the light and grew suspicious--a spy has to be, for he
+carries a weapon that has only one cartridge in it.
+
+Marie Louise waited for him to explain his purpose till the suspense
+began to show; then she said, bluntly:
+
+"What mischief are you up to now?"
+
+"Mitschief--me?" he asked, all innocently.
+
+"You said you wanted to see me."
+
+"I always want to see you. You interest--my eyes--my heart--"
+
+"Please don't." She said it with the effect of slamming a door.
+
+She looked him full in the eyes angrily, then remembered her
+curiosity. He saw her gaze waver with a double motive.
+
+It is strange how people can fence with their glances, as if they were
+emanations from the eyes instead of mere reflections of light back and
+forth. But however it is managed, this man and this woman played their
+stares like two foils feeling for an opening. At length he surrendered
+and resolved to appeal:
+
+"How do you feel about--about us?"
+
+"Who are us?"
+
+"We Germans."
+
+"We are not Germans. I'm American."
+
+"Then England is your greater enemy than Germany."
+
+She wanted to smile at that, but she said:
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+He pleaded for his cause. "America ought not to have joined the war
+against the _Vaterland_. It is only a few Americans--bankers who
+lended money to England--who wish to fight us."
+
+Up-stairs Jake's heart bounded. Here was a fellow-spirit. He listened
+for Marie Louise's response; he caught the doubt in her tone. She
+could not stomach such an absurdity:
+
+"Bosh!" she said.
+
+It sounded like "Boche!" And Nicky flushed.
+
+"You have been in this Washington town too long. I think I shall go
+now."
+
+Marie Louise made no objection. She had not found out what he was up
+to, but she was sick of duplicity, sick of the sight of him and all he
+stood for. She did not even ask him to come again. She went to the
+door with him and stood there a moment, long enough for the man who
+was shadowing Nicky to identify her. She watched Nicky go and hoped
+that she had seen the last of him. But up-stairs the great heart of
+Jake Nuddle was seething with excitement. He ran to the front window,
+caught a glimpse of Nicky, and hurried back down the stairs.
+
+Abbie called out, "Where you goin'?"
+
+Jake did not answer such a meddlesome question, but he said to Marie
+Louise, as he brushed past her on the stairs:
+
+"I'm going to the drug-store to git me some cigars."
+
+Nicky paused on the curb, looking for a cab. He had dismissed his own,
+hoping to spend a long while with Marie Louise. He saw that he was
+not likely to pick up a cab in such a side-street, and so he walked on
+briskly.
+
+He was furious with Marie Louise. He had had hopes of her, and she had
+fooled him. These Americans were no longer dependable.
+
+And then he heard footsteps on the walk, quick footsteps that spelled
+hurry. Nicky drew aside to let the speeder pass; but instead he heard
+a constabular "Hay!" and his shoulder-blades winced.
+
+It was only Jake Nuddle. Jake had no newspaper to sell, but he had an
+idea for a collaboration which would bring him some of that easy money
+the Germans were squandering like drunken sailors.
+
+"You was just talkin' to my sister-in-law," said Jake.
+
+"Ah, you are then the brother of Marie Louise?"
+
+"Yep, and I couldn't help hearin' a little of what passed between
+you."
+
+Jake's slyness had a detective-like air in Nicky's anxious eyes. He
+warned himself to be on guard. Jake said:
+
+"I'm for Germany unanimous. I think it's a rotten shame for America to
+go into this war. And some of us Americans are sayin' we won't stand
+for it. We don't own no Congersmen; we're only the protelarriat, as
+the feller says; but we're goin' to put this country on the bum, and
+that's what old Kaiser Bill wants we should do, or I miss my guess,
+hay?"
+
+Nicky was cautious:
+
+"How do you propose to help the All Highest?"
+
+"Sabotodge."
+
+"You interest me," said Nicky.
+
+They had come to one of the circles that moon the plan of Washington.
+Nicky motioned Jake to a bench, where they could command the approach
+and be, like good children, seen and not heard. Jake outlined his
+plan.
+
+When Nicky Easton had rung Marie Louise's bell he had not imagined how
+much help Marie Louise would render him in giving him the precious
+privilege of meeting her unprepossessing brother-in-law; nor had she
+dreamed what peril she was preparing for Davidge in planning to secure
+for him and his shipyard the services of this same Jake, as lazy and
+as amiable as any side-winder rattlesnake that ever basked in the
+sunlit sand.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV
+
+AT THE SHIPYARD
+
+[Illustration: There was something hallowed and awesome about it all. It
+had a cathedral majesty.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Davidge despised a man who broke his contracts. He broke one with
+himself and despised himself. He broke his contract to ignore the
+existence of Marie Louise. The next time he came to Washington he
+sought her out. He called up the Widdicombe home and learned that she
+had moved. She had no telephone yet, for it took a vast amount of time
+to get any but a governmental telephone installed. So he noted her
+address, and after some hesitation decided to call. If she did not
+want to see him, her butler could tell him that she was out.
+
+He called. Marie Louise had tried in vain to get in servants who would
+stay. Abbie talked to them familiarly--and so did Jake. The virtuous
+ones left because of Jake, and the others left because of Abbie.
+
+So Abbie went to the door when Davidge called. He supposed that the
+butler was having a day off and the cook was answering the bell. He
+offered his card to Abbie.
+
+She wiped her hand on her apron and took it, then handed it back to
+him, saying:
+
+"You'll have to read it. I ain't my specs."
+
+Davidge said, "Please ask Miss Webling if she can see Mr. Davidge."
+
+"You're not Mr. Davidge!" Abbie gasped, remembering the importance
+Marie Louise gave him.
+
+"Yes," said Davidge, with proper modesty.
+
+"Well, I want to know!"
+
+Abbie wiped her hand again and thrust it forward, seizing his
+questioning fingers in a practised clench, and saying, "Come right on
+in and seddown." She haled the befuddled Davidge to a chair and
+regarded him with beaming eyes. He regarded her with the eyes of
+astonishment--and the ears, too, for the amazing servant, forever
+wiping her hands, went to the stairs and shrieked:
+
+"Mamee-eese! Oh, Ma-mee-uz! Mist' Davidge is shere."
+
+Poor Mamise! She had to come down upon such a scene, and without
+having had any chance to break the news that she had a sister she had
+to introduce the sister. She had no chance to explain her till a
+fortunate whiff of burning pastry led Abbie to groan, "My Lord, them
+pies!" and flee.
+
+If ever Marie Louise had been guilty of snobbery, she was doing
+penance for it now. She was too loyal to what her family ought to have
+been and was not to apologize for Abbie, but she suffered in a social
+purgatory.
+
+Worse yet, she had to ask Davidge to give her brother-in-law a job.
+And Davidge said he would. He said it before he saw Jake. And when he
+saw him, though he did not like him, he did not guess what treachery
+the fellow planned. He invited him to come to the shipyard--by train.
+
+He invited Mamise to ride thither in her own car the next day to see
+his laboratory for ships, never dreaming that the German menace was
+already planning its destruction.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Not only in cheap plays and farces do people continue in perplexities
+that one question and one answer would put an end to. In real life we
+incessantly dread to ask the answers to conundrums that we cannot
+solve, and persist in misery for lack of a little frankness.
+
+For many a smiling mile, on the morrow, Davidge rode in a torment. So
+stout a man, to be fretted by so little a matter! Yet he was unable to
+bring himself to the point of solving his curiosity. The car had
+covered forty miles, perhaps, while his thoughts ran back and forth,
+lacing the road like a dog accompanying a carriage. A mental
+speedometer would have run up a hundred miles before he made the
+plunge and popped the subject.
+
+"Mamise is an unusual name," he remarked.
+
+Marie Louise was pleasantly startled by the realization that his long
+silence had been devoted to her.
+
+"Like it?" she asked.
+
+"You bet." The youthfulness of this embarrassed him and made her
+laugh. He grew solemn for about eleven hundred yards of road that went
+up and down and up and down in huge billows. Then he broke out again:
+
+"It's an unusual name."
+
+She laughed patiently. "So I've heard."
+
+The road shot up a swirling hill into an old, cool grove.
+
+"I only knew one other--er--Mamise."
+
+This sobered her. It was unpleasant not to be unique. The chill woods
+seemed to be rather glum about it, too. The road abandoned them and
+flung into a sun-bathed plain.
+
+"Really? You really knew another--er--Mamise?"
+
+"Yes. Years ago."
+
+"Was she nice?"
+
+"Very."
+
+"Oh!" She was sorry about that, too. The road slipped across a
+loose-planked, bone-racking bridge. With some jealousy she asked,
+"What was she like?"
+
+"You."
+
+"That's odd." A little shabby, topply-tombed graveyard glided by,
+reverting to oblivion. "Tell me about her."
+
+A big motor charged past so fast that the passengers were only blurs,
+a grim chauffeur-effect with blobs of fat womankind trailing snapping
+veils. The car trailed a long streamer of dust that tasted of the
+road. When this was penetrated they entered upon a stretch of pleasant
+travel for eyes and wheels, on a long, long channel through a fruitful
+prairie, a very allegory of placid opulence.
+
+"It was funny," said Davidge. "I was younger than I am. I went to a
+show one night. A musical team played that everlasting 'Poet and
+Peasant' on the xylophones. They played nearly everything on nearly
+everything--same old stuff, accordions, horns, bells; same old jokes
+by the same fool clown and the solemn dubs. But they had a girl with
+'em--a young thing. She didn't play very well. She had a way with her,
+though--seemed kind of disgusted with life and the rest of the troupe
+and the audience. And she had a right to be disgusted, for she was as
+pretty as--I don't know what. She was just beautiful--slim and limber
+and long--what you might imagine a nymph would look like if she got
+loose in a music-hall.
+
+"I was crazy about her. If I could ever have written a poem about
+anybody, it would have been about her. She struck me as something sort
+of--well, divine. She wore the usual, and not much of it--low neck,
+bare arms, and--tights. But I kind of revered her; she was so dog-on
+pretty.
+
+"When the drop fell on that act I was lost. I was an orphan for true.
+I couldn't rest till I saw the manager and asked him to take me back
+and introduce me to her. He gave me a nasty grin and said he didn't
+run that kind of a theater, and I said I'd knock his face off if he
+thought I thought he did. Well, he gave in finally and took me back. I
+fell down the side-aisle steps and sprawled along the back of the
+boxes and stumbled up the steps to the stage.
+
+"And then I met Mamise--that was her name on the program--Mamise. She
+was pretty and young as ever, but she wasn't a nymph any longer. She
+was just a young, painted thing, a sulky, disgusted girl. And she was
+feeding a big monkey--a chimpanzee or something. It was sitting on a
+bicycle and smoking a cigar--getting ready to go on the stage.
+
+"It was so human and so unhuman and so ugly, and she was so graceful,
+that it seemed like a sort of satire on humanity. The manager said,
+'Say, Mamise, this gentleman here wants to pays his respecks.' She
+looked up in a sullen way, and the chimpanzee showed his teeth at me,
+and I mumbled something about expecting to see the name Mamise up in
+the big electric lights.
+
+"She gave me a look that showed she thought I was a darned fool, and I
+agreed with her then--and since. She said, 'Much obliged' in a
+contemptuous contralto and--and turned to the other monkey.
+
+"The interview was finished. I backed over a scene-prop, knocked down
+a stand of Indian-clubs, and got out into the alley. I was mad at her
+at first, but afterward I always respected her for snubbing me. I
+never saw her again, never saw her name again. As for the big electric
+lights, I was a punk prophet. But her name has stood out in electric
+lights in my--my memory. I suppose she left the stage soon after. She
+may be dead now.
+
+"It hurt me a lot to have her wither me with that one big, slow glance
+of hers, but I was glad of it afterward. It made me feel more
+comfortable about her. If she had welcomed every stranger that came
+along she--well, as she didn't, she must have been a good girl, don't
+you suppose?"
+
+The road still pierced the golden scene, a monotony of plenty, an
+endless-seeming treasure of sheaves of wheat and stacks of corn, with
+pumpkins of yellow metal and twisted ingots of squash; but an autumnal
+sorrow clouded the landscape for Marie Louise.
+
+"What do you call a good girl?" she asked.
+
+"That's a hard question to answer nowadays."
+
+"Why nowadays?"
+
+"Oh, because our ideas of good are so much more merciful and our ideas
+of girls are so much more--complicated. Anyway, as the fellow said,
+that's my story. And now you know all about Mamise that I know. Can
+you forgive her for wearing your name?"
+
+"I could forgive that Mamise anything," she sighed. "But this Mamise I
+can't forgive at all."
+
+This puzzled him. "I don't quite get that."
+
+She let him simmer in his own perplexity through a furlong of what
+helpless writers call "a shady dell"; its tenderness won from him a
+timid confession.
+
+"You reminded me of her when I first met you. You are as different as
+can be, and yet somehow you remind me of each other."
+
+"Somehow we are each other."
+
+He leaned forward and stared at her, and she spared him a hasty glance
+from the road. She was blushing.
+
+He was so childishly happy that he nearly said, "It's a small world,
+after all." He nearly swung to the other extreme. "Well, I'll be--" He
+settled like a dying pendulum on, "Well--well!" They both laughed, and
+he put out his hand. "Pleased to meet you again."
+
+She let go the wheel and pressed his hand an instant.
+
+The plateau was ended, and the road went overboard in a long, steep
+cascade. She pushed out the clutch and coasted. The whir of the engine
+stopped. The car sailed softly.
+
+He was eager for news of the years between then and now. It was so
+wonderful that the surly young beginner in vaudeville should have
+evolved into this orchid of the salons. He was interested in the
+working of such social machinery. He urged:
+
+"Tell me all about yourself."
+
+"No, thanks."
+
+"But what happened to you after I saw you? You don't remember me, of
+course."
+
+"I remember the monkey."
+
+They both laughed at the unconscious brutality of this. He turned
+solemn and asked:
+
+"You mean that so many men came back to call on you?"
+
+"No, not so many--too many, but not many. But--well, the monkey was
+more unusual, I suppose. He traveled with us several weeks. He was
+very jealous. He had a fight with a big trained dog that I petted
+once. They nearly killed each other before they could be separated.
+And such noises as they made! I can hear them yet. The manager of the
+monkey wanted to marry me. I was unhappy with my team, but I hated
+that man--he was such a cruel beast with the monkey that supported
+him. He'd have beaten me, too, I suppose, and made me support him."
+
+Davidge sighed with relief as if her escape had been just a moment
+before instead of years ago.
+
+"Lord! I'm glad you didn't marry him! But tell me what did happen
+after I saw you."
+
+The road led them into a sizable town, street-car tracks, bad
+pavements, stupid shops, workmen's little homes in rows like
+chicken-houses, then better streets, better homes, business blocks
+well paved, a hotel, a post-office, a Carnegie library, a gawky Civil
+War statue, then poorer shops, rickety pavements, shanties, and the
+country again.
+
+Davidge noted that she had not answered his question. He repeated it:
+
+"What happened after you and the monkey-trainer parted?"
+
+"Oh, years later I was in Berlin with a team called the Musical Mokes,
+and Sir Joseph and Lady Webling saw me and thought I looked like their
+daughter, and they adopted me--that's all."
+
+She had grown a bit weary of her autobiography. Abbie had made her
+tell it over and over, but had tried in vain to find out what went on
+between her stage-beginnings and her last appearance in Berlin.
+
+Davidge was fascinated by her careless summary of such great events;
+for to one in love, all biography of the beloved becomes important
+history. But having seen her as a member of Sir Joseph's household, he
+was more interested in the interregnum.
+
+"But between your reaching Berlin and the time I saw you what
+happened?"
+
+"That's my business."
+
+She saw him wince at the abrupt discourtesy of this. She apologized:
+
+"I don't mean to be rude, but--well, it wouldn't interest you."
+
+"Oh yes, it would. Don't tell me if you don't want to, but--"
+
+"But--"
+
+"Oh, nothing!"
+
+"You mean you'll think that if I don't tell you it's because I'm
+ashamed to."
+
+"Oh no, not at all."
+
+"Oh yes, at all. Well, what if I were?"
+
+"I can't imagine your having done anything to be ashamed of."
+
+"O Lord! Am I as stupid as that comes to?"
+
+"No! But I mean, you couldn't have done anything to be really ashamed
+of."
+
+"That's what I mean. I've done numberless things I'd give my right arm
+not to have done."
+
+"I mean really wicked things."
+
+"Such as--"
+
+"Oh--well, I mean being bad."
+
+"Woman-bad or man-bad?"
+
+"Bad for a woman."
+
+"So what's bad for one is not bad for another."
+
+"Well, not exactly, but there is a difference."
+
+"If I told you that I had been very, very wicked in those mysterious
+years, would it seem important to you?"
+
+"Of course! Horribly! It couldn't help it, if a man cared much for a
+woman."
+
+"And if a woman cared a lot for a man, ought it to make a difference
+what he had done before he met her?"
+
+"Well, of course--but that's different."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Oh, because it is."
+
+"Men say 'Because!' too, I see."
+
+"It's just shorthand with us. It means you know it so well there's no
+need of explaining."
+
+"Oh! Well, if you--I say, _if_ you were very much in love with me--"
+
+"Which I--"
+
+"Don't be odiously polite. I'm arguing, not fishing. If you were
+deeply in love with me, would it make a good deal of difference to you
+if several years ago I had been--oh, loose?"
+
+"It would break my heart."
+
+Marie Louise liked him the better for this, but she held to her
+argument.
+
+"All right. Now, still supposing that we loved each other, ought I
+to inquire of you if the man of my possible choice had been
+perfectly--well, spotless, all that time? Ought I expect that he was
+saving himself up for me, feeling himself engaged to me, you might
+say, long before he met me, and keeping perfectly true to his
+future fiancée--ought I to expect that?"
+
+He flushed a little as he mumbled:
+
+"Hardly!"
+
+She laughed a trifle bitterly:
+
+"So we're there already?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"At the double standard. What's crime for the goose is pastime for the
+gander."
+
+He did not intend to give up man's ancient prerogative.
+
+"Well, it's better to have almost any standard than none, isn't it?"
+
+"I wonder."
+
+"The single standard is better than the sixteen to one--silver for men
+and gold for women."
+
+"Perhaps! But you men seem to believe in a sixteen to none. Mind you,
+I'm not saying I've been bad."
+
+"I knew you couldn't have been."
+
+"Oh yes, I could have been--I'm not saying I wasn't. I'm not saying
+anything at all. I'm saying that it's nobody's business but my own."
+
+"Even your future husband has no right to know?"
+
+"None whatever. He has the least right of all, and he'd better not try
+to find out."
+
+"You women are changing things!"
+
+"We have to, if we're going to live among men. When you're in
+Rome--"
+
+"You're going to turn the world upside down, I suppose?"
+
+"We've always done that more or less, and nobody ever could stop us,
+from the Garden of Eden on. In the future, one thing is sure: a lot of
+women will go wrong, as the saying is, under the new conditions, with
+liberty and their own money and all. But, good Lord! millions of women
+went wrong in the old days! The first books of the Bible tell about
+all the kinds of wickedness that we know to-day. Somebody complained
+that with all our modern science we hadn't invented one new deadly
+sin. We go on using the same old seven--well, indecencies. It will be
+the same with women. It's bound to be. You can't keep women unfree.
+You've simply got to let them loose. The old ways were hideous; and
+it's dishonest and vicious to pretend that people used to be better
+than they were, just as an argument in favor of slavery, for fear they
+will be worse than the imaginary woman they put up for an argument. I
+fancy women were just about as good and just about as bad in old
+Turkey, in the jails they call harems, as they are in a three-ringed
+circus to-day.
+
+"When the old-fashioned woman went wrong she lied or cried or
+committed suicide or took to the streets or went on with her social
+success, as the case might be. She'll go on doing much the same--just
+as men do. Some men repent, some cheat, some kill themselves; others
+go right along about their business, whether it's in a bank, a church,
+a factory, a city or a village or anywhere.
+
+"But in the new marriage--for marriage is really changing, though the
+marrying people are the same old folks--in the new marriage a man must
+do what a woman has had to do all along: take the partner for better
+or worse and no questions asked."
+
+He humored her heresy because he found it too insane to reason with.
+"In other words, we'll take our women as is."
+
+"That's the expression--_as is_. A man will take his sweetheart 'as
+is' or leave her. And whichever he does, as you always say, oh, she'll
+get along somehow."
+
+"The old-fashioned home goes overboard, then?"
+
+"That depends on what you mean by the old-fashioned home. I had one,
+and it could well be spared. There were all kinds of homes in old
+times and the Middle Ages and nowadays, and there'll be all kinds
+forever. But we're wrangling like a pair of lovers instead of getting
+along beautifully like a pair of casual acquaintances."
+
+"Aren't we going to be more than that?"
+
+"I hope not. I want a place on your pay-roll; I'm not asking for a job
+as your wife."
+
+"You can have it."
+
+"Thanks, but I have another engagement. When I have made my way in the
+world and can support you in the style you're accustomed to, I may
+come and ask for your hand."
+
+Her flippancy irked him worse than her appalling ideas, but she grew
+more desirable as she grew more infuriating, for the love-game has
+some resemblances to the fascinating-sickening game of golf. She did
+not often argue abstrusely, and she was already fagged out mentally.
+She broke off the debate.
+
+"Now let's think of something else, if you don't mind."
+
+They talked of everything else, but his soul was chiefly engaged in
+alternating vows to give her up and vows to make her his own in spite
+of herself; and he kept on trying to guess the conundrum she posed him
+in refusing to enlighten him as to those unmentionable years between
+his first sight of her and his second.
+
+In making love, as in other popular forms of fiction, the element of
+mystery is an invaluable adjunct to the property value. He was still
+pondering her and wondering what she was pondering when they reached
+the town where his shipyard lay.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+From a hilltop Marie Louise saw below her in panorama an ugly mess
+of land and riverscape--a large steel shed, a bewilderment of
+scaffolding, then a far stretch of muddy flats spotted with flies that
+were probably human beings, among a litter of timber, of girders, of
+machine-shanties, of railroad tracks, all spread out along a dirty
+water.
+
+A high wire fence surrounded what seemed to need no protection. In the
+neighborhood were numbers of workmen's huts--some finished, and long
+rows of them in building, as much alike and as graceful as a pan of
+raw biscuits.
+
+She saw it all as it was, with a stranger's eyes. Davidge saw it with
+the eyes a father sees a son through, blind to evident faults, vividly
+accepting future possibilities as realities.
+
+Davidge said, with repressed pride:
+
+"Well, thar she blows!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"My shipyard!" This with depressed pride.
+
+"Oh, rilly! So it is! How wonderful!" This with forced enthusiasm.
+
+"You don't like it," he groaned.
+
+"I'm crazy about it."
+
+"If you could have seen it when it was only marsh and weeds and
+mud-holes and sluices you'd appreciate what we've reclaimed and the
+work that has been done."
+
+The motor pitched down a badly bruised road.
+
+"Where's the ship that's nearly done--your mother's ship?"
+
+"Behind the shed, in among all that scaffolding."
+
+"Don't tell me there's a ship in there!"
+
+"Yep, and she's just bursting to come out."
+
+They entered the yard, past a guardian who looked as if a bottle of
+beer would buy him, and a breath strong enough to blow off the froth
+would blow him over.
+
+Within a great cage of falsework Marie Louise could see the ship that
+Davidge had dedicated to his mother. But he did not believe Marie
+Louise ready to understand it.
+
+"Let's begin at the beginning," he said. "See those railroad tracks
+over there? Well, that's where the timber comes from the forests and
+the steel from the mills. Now we'll see what happens to 'em in the
+shop."
+
+He took her into the shed and showed her the traveling-cranes that
+could pick up a locomotive between their long fingers and carry it
+across the long room like a captured beetle.
+
+"Up-stairs is the mold-loft. It's our dressmaking-shop. We lay down
+the design on the floor, and mark out every piece of the ship in exact
+size, and then make templates of wood to match--those are the
+patterns. It's something like making a gown, I suppose."
+
+"I see," said Marie Louise. "Then you fit the dress together out in
+the yard."
+
+"Exactly," said Davidge. "You've mastered the whole thing already.
+It's a long climb up there. Will you try it?"
+
+"Later, perhaps. I want to see these delightful what-you-may-call-'ems
+first."
+
+She watched the men at work, each group about its own machine, like
+priests at their various altars. Davidge explained to her the cruncher
+that manicured thick plates of steel sheets as if they were
+finger-nails, or beveled their edges; the puncher that needled
+rivet-holes through them as if they were silk, the ingenious Lysholm
+tables with rollers for tops.
+
+Marie Louise was like a child in a wholesale toy-shop, understanding
+nothing, ecstatic over everything, forbidden to touch anything. In her
+ignorance of technical matters, the simplest device was miraculous.
+The whole place was a vast laboratory of mysteries and magic.
+
+There was a something hallowed and awesome about it all. It had a
+cathedral grandeur, even though it was a temple builded with hands for
+the sake of the things builded with hands. The robes of the votaries
+were grimy and greasy, and the prayer they poured out was sweat. They
+chewed tobacco and spat regardless. They eyed her as curiously as she
+them. They swaggered each his own way, one by extra obliviousness,
+another with a flourish of gesture. They seemed to want to speak, and
+so did she, but embarrassment caused a common silence.
+
+On the ground they had cleared and under the roof they had established
+they had fashioned vessels that should carry not myrrh and nard to
+make a sweet smell or to end in a delicate smoke, but wheat, milk and
+coal, clothes and shoes and shells, for the feeding and warming of
+people in need, and for the destruction of the god of destruction.
+
+Marie Louise's response to the mood of the place was conversion, a
+passion to take vows of eternal industry, to put on the holy vestments
+of toil and wield the--she did not even know the names of the tools.
+She only knew that they were sacred implements.
+
+She was in an almost trancelike state when Davidge led her from this
+world with its own sky of glass to the outer world with the same old
+space-colored sky. He conducted her among heaps of material waiting to
+be assembled, the raw stuffs of creation.
+
+As they drew near the almost finished ship the noise of the riveting
+which had been but a vague palpitation of the air became a well-nigh
+intolerable staccato.
+
+Men were at work everywhere, Lilliputian against the bulk of the hull
+they were contriving. Davidge escorted Marie Louise with caution
+across tremulous planks, through dark caverns into the hold of the
+ship.
+
+In these grottoes of steel the clamor of the riveters grew maddening
+in her ears. They were everywhere, holding their machine-guns against
+reverberant metal and hammering steel against steel with a superhuman
+velocity; for man had made himself more than man by his own
+inventions, had multiplied himself by his own machineries.
+
+"That's the great Sutton," Davidge remarked, presently. "He's our
+prima donna. He's the champion riveter of this part of the country.
+Like to meet him?"
+
+Marie Louise nodded yes before she noted that the man was stripped to
+the waist. Runnels of sweat ran down his flesh and shot from the
+muscles leaping beneath his swart hide.
+
+Davidge went up to him and, after howling in vain, tapped his brawn.
+Sutton looked up, shut off his noise, and turned to Davidge with the
+impatience of a great tenor interrupted in a cadenza by a mere
+manager.
+
+Davidge yelled, with unnecessary voltage:
+
+"Sutton, I want to present you to Miss Webling."
+
+Sutton realized his nakedness like another Adam, and his confusion
+confused Marie Louise. She nodded. He nodded. Perhaps he made his
+muscles a little tauter.
+
+Davidge had planned to ask Sutton to let Marie Louise try to drive a
+rivet, just to show her how hopeless her ambition was, but he dared
+not loiter. Marie Louise, feeling silly in the silence, asked,
+stupidly:
+
+"So that's a riveter?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am," Sutton confessed, "this is a riveter."
+
+"Oh!" said Marie Louise.
+
+"Well, I guess we'll move on," said Davidge. As conversation, it was
+as unimportant as possible, but it had a negative historical value,
+since it left Marie Louise unconvinced of her inability to be a
+rivetress.
+
+She said, "Thank you," and moved on. Davidge followed. Sutton took up
+his work again, as a man does after a woman has passed by, pretending
+to be indignant, trying by an added ferocity to conceal his delight.
+
+At a distance Davidge paused to say: "He's a great card, Sutton. He
+gets a lot of money, but he earns it before he spends it, and he's my
+ideal of a workman. His work comes first. He hogs all the pay the
+traffic will bear, but he goes on working and he takes a pride in
+being better than anybody else in his line. So many of these infernal
+laborers have only one ideal--to do the least possible work and earn
+enough to loaf most of the time."
+
+Marie Louise thought of some of Jake Nuddle's principles and wondered
+if she had done right in recommending him for a place on Davidge's
+pay-roll. She was afraid he would be a slacker, never dreaming that he
+would be industrious in all forms of destruction. Jake never demanded
+short hours for his conspiracies.
+
+At the top of the unfinished deck Marie Louise forgot Jake and gave
+her mind up to admiring Davidge as the father of all this factory. He
+led her down, out and along the bottom-land, through bogs, among heaps
+of rusty iron, to a concrete building-slip. He seemed to be very
+important about something, but she could not imagine what it was. She
+saw nothing but a long girder made up of sections. It lay along a flat
+sheet of perforated steel--the homeliest contraption imaginable.
+
+"Whatever is all this," she asked,--"the beginning of a bridge?"
+
+"Yes and no. It's the beginning of part of the bridge we're building
+across the Atlantic."
+
+"I don't believe that I quite follow you."
+
+"This is the keel of a ship."
+
+"No!"
+
+"Yep!"
+
+"And was the _Clara_ like this once?"
+
+"No. _Clara's_ an old-fashioned creature like mother. This is a
+newfangled thing like--like you."
+
+"Like me! This isn't--"
+
+"This is to be the _Mamise_."
+
+She could not hide her disappointment in her namesake.
+
+"I must confess she's not very beautiful to start with."
+
+"Neither were you at first, I suppose. I--I beg your pardon. I
+mean--"
+
+He tried to tell her about the new principles of fabricated ships, the
+standardizing of the parts, and their manufacture at distances by
+various steel plants, the absence of curved lines, the advantage of
+all the sacrifice of the old art for the new speed.
+
+In spite of what she had read she could not make his information her
+own. And yet it was thrilling to look at. She broke out:
+
+"I've just got to learn how to build ships. It's the one thing on
+earth that will make me happy."
+
+"Then I'll have to get it for you."
+
+"You mean it?"
+
+"If anything I could do could make you happy--cutting off my right
+arm, or--"
+
+"That's no end nice of you. But I am in earnest. I'm wretchedly
+unhappy, doing nothing. We women, I fancy, are most of us just where
+boys are when they have outgrown boyhood and haven't reached
+manhood--when they are crazy to be at something, and can't even decide
+where to begin. Women have got to come out in the world and get to
+work. Here's my job, and I want it!"
+
+He looked at the delicate hands she fluttered before him, and he
+smiled. She protested:
+
+"I always loved physical exercise. In England I did the roughest sort
+of farmwork. I'm stronger than I look. I think I'd rather play one of
+those rat-tat-tat instruments than--than a harp in New Jerusalem."
+
+Davidge shook his head. "I'm afraid you're not quite strong enough. It
+takes a lot of power to hold the gun against the hull. The compressed
+air kicks and shoves so hard that even men tire quickly. Sutton
+himself has all he can do to keep alive."
+
+"Give me a hammer, then, and let me--smite something."
+
+"Don't you think you'd rather begin in the office? You could learn the
+business there first. Besides, I don't like the thought of your
+roughing up those beautiful hands of yours."
+
+"If men would only quit trying to keep women's hands soft and clean,
+the world would be the better for it."
+
+"Well, come down and learn the business first--you'd be nearer me."
+
+She sidestepped this sentimental jab and countered with a practical
+left hook:
+
+"But you'd teach me ship-building?"
+
+"I'd rather teach you home-building."
+
+"If you mean a home on the bounding main, I'll get right to work."
+
+He was stubborn about beginning with office tasks, and he took her to
+the mold-loft. She was fascinated but appalled by her own ignorance of
+what had come to be the most important of all knowledge.
+
+She sighed. "I've always been such a smatterer. I never have really
+known anything about anything. Most women are so astonishingly
+ignorant and indifferent about the essentials of men's life."
+
+She secretly resolved that she would study some of the basic
+principles of male existence--bookkeeping, drafting, letter-writing,
+filing, trading. It amused her as a kind of new mischief to take a
+course of business instruction on the sly and report for duty not as
+an ignoramus, but as a past-mistress in office practice. It was at
+least a refreshing novelty in duplicity.
+
+She giggled a little at the quaintness of her conspiracy. The old
+song, "Trust Her Not--She Is Fooling Thee," occurred to her in a
+fantastic parody: "Trust her not--she is fooling thee; she is
+clandestine at the business college; she is leading a double-entry
+life. She writes you in longhand, but she is studying shorthand. She
+is getting to be very fast--on the typewriter."
+
+Davidge asked her why she snickered, but she would not divulge her
+plot. She was impatient to spring it. She wondered if in a week she
+could learn all she had to learn--if she worked hard. It would be
+rather pleasant to sit at his desk-leaf and take dictation from
+him--confidential letters that he would intrust to no one else,
+letters written in a whisper and full of dark references. She hoped
+she could learn stenographic velocity in a few days.
+
+As she and Davidge walked back to the car she noted the workmen's
+shanties.
+
+"If I come here, may I live in one of those cunning new bungalettes?"
+
+"Indeed not! There are some nice houses in town."
+
+"I'm sick of nice houses. I want to rough it. In the next war millions
+of women will live in tents the way the men do. Those shanties would
+be considered palaces in Belgium and northern France. In fact, any
+number of women are over there now building huts for the poor souls."
+
+Davidge grew more and more wretched. He could not understand such a
+twisted courtship. His sweetheart did not want jewels and luxuries and
+a life of wealthy ease. Her only interest in him seemed to be that he
+would let her live in a shanty, wear overalls, and pound steel all day
+for union wages.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+An eloquent contrast with Marie Louise was furnished by Jake Nuddle.
+He was of the ebb type. He was degenerating into a shirker, a
+destroyer, a money-maniac, a complainer of other men's successes. His
+labor was hardly more than a foundation for blackmailing. He loved no
+country, had not even a sense of following the crowd. He called the
+Star-spangled Banner a dirty rag, and he wanted to wipe his feet on
+it. He was useless, baneful, doomed.
+
+Marie Louise was coming into a new Canaan. What she wanted was work
+for the work's sake, to be building something and thereby building
+herself, to be helping her country forward, to be helping mankind,
+poor and rich. The sight of the flag made her heart ache with a
+rapture of patriotism. She had the urge to march with an army.
+
+Marie Louise was on the up grade, Jake on the down. They met at the
+gate of the shipyard.
+
+Jake and Abbie had come over by train. Jake was surly in his tone to
+Davidge. His first question was, "Where do we live?"
+
+Marie Louise answered, "In one of those quaint little cottages."
+
+Jake frowned before he looked. He was one of those who hate before
+they see, feel nausea before they taste, condemn the unknown, the
+unheard, the unoffending.
+
+By the time Jake's eyes had found the row of shanties his frown was a
+splendid thing.
+
+"Quaint little hog-pens!" he growled. "Is this company the same as all
+the rest--treatin' its slaves like swine?"
+
+Davidge knew the type. For the sake of Marie Louise he restrained his
+first impulses and spoke with amiable acidity:
+
+"There are better houses in town, some of them very handsome."
+
+"Yah--but what rent?"
+
+"Rather expensive. Rather distant, too, but you can make it easily in
+an automobile."
+
+"Where would I git a nautomobile?"
+
+"I can introduce you to the man who sold me mine."
+
+"How would I get the price?"
+
+"Just where I did."
+
+"Whurr's that?"
+
+"Oh, all over the place. I used to be a common unskilled laborer like
+you. And now I own a good part of this business. Thousands of men who
+began poorer than I did are richer than I am. The road's just as open
+to you as to me."
+
+Jake had plenty of answers for this. He had memorized numbers of them
+from the tracts; but also he had plans that would not be furthered by
+quarreling with Davidge the first day. He could do Davidge most harm
+by obeying him and outwardly catering to him. He solaced his pride
+with a thought of what Davidge's business would look like when he got
+through with it.
+
+He laughed: "All right, boss. I was just beefin', for the fun of
+beefin'. Them shanties suit me elegant."
+
+Then his fool wife had to go and bust in, "Oh, Jake, if you would do
+like Mr. Davidge done, and git rich and live easy!"
+
+Jake gave her a pantomimic rebuke that reduced her to a pulpy
+silence.
+
+Marie Louise thought to restore Abbie's spirits a little by saying
+that she herself was coming down to work and to live in one of those
+very shanties. But Abbie gave her up as hopeless. Why any one should
+want to leave a house like what Mamise had, and money in the bank, and
+no call to lift her hand for nothing except to ring a bell and get
+somebody to fetch anything, and leave all that and live like a
+squatter and actually work--well, it did beat all how foolish some
+folks could be in the world nowadays.
+
+Marie Louise left Abbie and Jake to establish themselves. She had to
+get back to Washington. Davidge had planned to go with her, but a
+long-distance telephone-call, and a visit from a group of prospective
+strikers, and a warning that a consignment of long-expected machinery
+had not yet arrived, took him out of the car. He was tempted to go
+with Marie Louise, anyway, but she begged him not to neglect his
+business for her unimportant self, and bade him good-by in an old
+Wakefield phrase, "If I don't see you again, hello!"
+
+She returned to Washington alone, but not lonely. Her thoughts smoked
+through her brain like a dust-cloud of shining particles, each radiant
+atom a great idea. The road home was through the sky; the villages and
+groves were vague pink clouds; the long downward slopes were shafts of
+sunlight, the ridges rainbows.
+
+It would take her hardly any time to conquer the mysteries of
+stenography. Surely they must be easy, considering some of the people
+that practised the art. She would study ship-building, and drafting,
+too. Her water-color landscapes had been highly praised by certain
+young men and old ladies in England. She would learn how to keep her
+own bank-account and revamp her arithmetic. She would take up light
+bookkeeping; and she would build up her strength in a gymnasium so
+that she could swing a sledge as well as the next one. She would offer
+her home in Washington for rent. With the mobs pouring in, it would
+not be untenanted long.
+
+Her last expectation was realized first. The morning after she reached
+home she visited Mr. Hailstorks and told him she would sublet her
+mansion. Now that she wanted to collect rent from it instead of paying
+rent for it her description of its advantages was inevitably altered.
+With perfect sincerity she described its very faults as attractions.
+
+Thereafter her life was made miserable by the calls of people who
+wanted to look the place over. She had incessant offers, but she would
+not surrender her nest till she was ready to go back to the shipyard,
+and that was always to-morrow--the movable to-morrow which like the
+horizon is always just beyond.
+
+She sent herself to school and was dazed by her ignorance. In
+arithmetic she had forgotten what she had gained at the age of ten,
+and it was not easy to recapture it.
+
+On the typewriter she had to learn the alphabet all over again in a
+new order, and this was fiendishly hard. She studied the touch-system
+with the keyboard covered, and her blunders were disheartening. Her
+deft fingers seemed hardly to be her own. They would not obey her will
+at all.
+
+Shorthand was baffling. It took her five times as long to write in
+shorthand as in longhand such thrilling literature as: "Dear
+customer,--Letter received and contents noted. In reply to same would
+say--"
+
+At first she was a trifle snobbish and stand-offish with some of the
+pert young fellow-pupils, but before long her opinion of them
+increased to a respect verging on awe.
+
+They could take dictation, chew gum, and fix their back hair with the
+free hand all at once. Their fingers pattered the keyboard like rain,
+and their letters were exquisitely neat. They had studied for a long
+time, and had acquired proficiency. And it is no easy thing to acquire
+proficiency in any task, from cobbling shoes to polishing sonnets or
+moving armies.
+
+Marie Louise was humiliated to find that she really did not know how
+to spell some of the simplest words. When she wrote with running pen
+she never stopped to spell. She just sketched the words and let them
+go. She wrote, "I beleive I recieved," so that nobody could tell _e_
+from _i_; and she put the dot where it might apply to either. Her
+punctuation was all dashes.
+
+The typewriter would not permit anything vague. A word stood out in
+its stark reality, howling "Illiterate!" at her. Her punctuation
+simply would not do.
+
+Pert young misses who were honored by a wink from an
+ice-cream-soda-counter keeper or by an invitation to a street-car
+conductors' dance turned out work of a Grecian perfection, while Marie
+Louise bit her lips and blushed with shame under the criticisms of her
+teacher. She was back in school again, the dunce of the class, and
+abject discouragements alternated with spurts of zeal.
+
+In the mean while the United States was also learning the rudiments of
+war and the enormous office-practice it required. Before the war was
+over the army of 118,000 men and 5,000 officers in February, 1917,
+would be an army of over 3,000,000, and of these over 2,000,000 would
+have been carried to Europe, half of them in British ships; 50,000 of
+these would be killed to Russia's 1,700,000 dead, Germany's 1,600,000,
+France's 1,385,000, England's 706,200, Italy's 406,000, and Belgium's
+102,000. The wounded Americans would be three times the total present
+army. Everybody was ignorant, blunderful. Externally and internally
+the United States was as busy as a trampled ant-hill.
+
+Everything in those days was done in drives. The armies made drives;
+the financiers made drives; the charities made drives. The world-heart
+was never so driven. And this was all on top of the ordinary human
+suffering, which did not abate one jot for all its overload. Teeth
+ached just as fiercely; jealousy was just as sickly green; empires
+crackled; people starved in herds; cities were pounded to gravel; army
+after army was taken prisoner or slaughtered; yet each agitated atom
+in the chaos was still the center of the tormented universe.
+
+Marie Louise suffered for mankind and for herself. She was lonely,
+love-famished, inept, dissatisfied, and abysmally ashamed of her
+general ineffectiveness. Then one of Washington's infamous hot weeks
+supervened. In the daytime the heat stung like a cat-o'-nine-tails.
+The nights were suffocation. She "slept," gasping as a fish flounders
+on dry land. After the long strain of fighting for peace, toiling for
+rest, the mornings would find Marie Louise as wrecked as if she had
+come in from a prolonged spree. Then followed a day of drudgery at the
+loathly necessities of her stupid work.
+
+Detail and delay are the tests of ambition. Ambition sees the
+mountain-peak blessed with sunlight and cries, "That is my goal!" But
+the feet must cross every ditch, wade every swamp, scramble across
+every ledge. The peak is the harder to see the nearer it comes; the
+last cliffs hide it altogether, and when it is reached it is only a
+rough crag surrounded by higher crags. The glory that lights it is
+glory in distant eyes alone.
+
+So for poor Mamise. She had run away from a squalid home to the
+gorgeous freedom of stage-life, only to find that the stage also is
+squalid and slavish, and that the will-o'-the-wisp of gorgeous freedom
+had jumped back to home life. She left the cheap theaters for the
+expensive luxury of Sir Joseph's mansion. But that had its squalors
+and slaveries, too. She had fled from troubled England to joyous
+America, only to find in America a thousand distresses.
+
+Then her eyes had been caught with the glitter of true freedom. She
+would be a builder of ships--cast off the restraint of womanhood and
+be a magnificent builder of ships! And now she was finding that this
+dream was also a nightmare.
+
+Everywhere she looked was dismay, futility, failure. The hot wave
+found her an easy victim. A frightened servant who did not know the
+difference between sunstroke and heat prostration nearly killed her
+before a doctor came.
+
+The doctor sent Marie Louise to bed, and in bed she stayed. It was her
+trained nurse who wrote a letter to Mr. Davidge regretting that she
+could not come to the launching of the _Clara_. Abbie was not present,
+either. She came up to be with Marie Louise. This was not the least of
+Marie Louise's woes.
+
+She was quite childish about missing the great event. She wept because
+another hand swung the netted champagne-bottle against the bow as it
+lurched down the toboggan-slide.
+
+Davidge wrote her about the launching, but it was a business man's
+letter, with the poetry all smothered. He told her that there had
+been an accident or two, and nearly a disaster--an unexploded
+infernal-machine had been found. A scheme to wreck the launching-ways
+had been detected on the final inspection.
+
+Marie Louise read the letter aloud to Abbie, and, even though she knew
+the ship was safe, trembled as if it were still in jeopardy. Her
+shaken faith in humanity was still capable of feeling bewilderment at
+the extremes of German savagery. She cried out to her sister:
+
+"How on earth can anybody be fiendish enough to have tried to destroy
+that ship even before it was launched? How could a German spy have got
+into the yard?"
+
+"It didn't have to have been a German," said Abbie, bitterly.
+
+"Who else would have wanted to play such a dastardly trick? No
+American would!"
+
+"Well, it depends on what you call Amurrican," said Abbie. "There's
+some them Independent workmen so independent they ain't got any
+country any more 'n what Cain had."
+
+"You can't suppose that Mr. Davidge has enemies among his own
+people?"
+
+"O' course he has! Slews of 'em. Some them workmen can't forgive the
+man that gives 'em a job."
+
+"But he pays big wages. Think of what Jake gets."
+
+"Oh, him! If he got all they was, he'd holler he was bein' cheated.
+Hollerin' and hatin' always come easy to Jake. If they wasn't easy, he
+wouldn't do 'em."
+
+Marie Louise gasped: "Abbie! In Heaven's name, you don't imply--"
+
+"No, I don't!" snapped Abbie. "I never implied in my life, and don't
+you go sayin' I did."
+
+Abbie was at bay now. She had to defend her man from outside
+suspicion. Suspicion of her husband is a wife's prerogative
+
+Marie Louise was too much absorbed in the general vision of man's
+potential villainy to follow up the individual clue. She was
+frightened away from considering Jake as a candidate for such infamy.
+Her wildest imaginings never put him in association with Nicky
+Easton.
+
+There were so many excursions and alarms in the world of 1917 that the
+riddle of who tried to sink the ship on dry land joined a myriad
+others in the riddle limbo.
+
+When Marie Louise was well enough to go back to her business school
+she found riddles enough in trying to decide where this letter or that
+had got to on the crazy keyboard, or what squirmy shorthand symbol it
+was that represented this syllable or that.
+
+She had lost the little speed she had had, and it was double drudgery
+regaining the forgotten lore. But she stood the gaff and found herself
+on the dizzy height of graduation from a lowly business school. She
+had traveled a long way from the snobbery of her recent years.
+
+Davidge recognized her face and her voice when she presented herself
+before him. But her soul was an utter stranger. She did not invite him
+to call on her or warn him that she was coming to call on him.
+
+She appeared in his anteroom and bribed one of the clerks to go to him
+with a message:
+
+"A young lady's outside--wants a position--as a stenogerpher."
+
+Davidge growled without looking up:
+
+"Why bother me? Send her to the chief clerk."
+
+"She wants to see you specially."
+
+"I'm out."
+
+"Said Miss Webling sent her."
+
+"O Lord!--show her in."
+
+Marie Louise entered. Davidge looked up, leaped up.
+
+She did not come in with the drawing-room, train-dragging manner of
+Miss Webling. She did not wear the insolent beauty of Mamise of the
+Musical Mokes. She was a white-waisted, plain-skirted office-woman, a
+businessette. She had a neat little hat and gave him a secretarial
+bow.
+
+He rushed to her hand, and they had a good laugh like two children
+playing pretend. Then he said:
+
+"Why the camouflage?"
+
+The word was not very new even then, or he would not have used it.
+
+She explained, with royal simplicity:
+
+"I want a job."
+
+She brought out her diploma and a certificate giving her a civil-service
+status. She was quite conceited about it.
+
+She insisted on displaying her accomplishments.
+
+"Give me some dictation," she dictated.
+
+He nodded, pummeled his head for an idea while she took from her
+hand-bag, not a vanity-case, but a stenographer's notebook and a sheaf
+of pencils.
+
+He noted that she sat down stenographically--very concisely. She
+perched her notebook on the desk of one crossed knee and perked her
+eyes up as alertly as a sparrow.
+
+All this professionalism sat so quaintly on the two Marie Louises he
+had known that he roared with laughter as at a child dressed up.
+
+She smiled patiently at his uproar till it subsided. Then he sobered
+and began to dictate:
+
+"Ready? 'Miss Mamise'--cross that out--'Miss Marie Louise Webling'--you
+know the address; I don't. 'Dear--My dear'--no, just 'Dear Miss
+Webling. Reference is had to your order of recent date that this
+house engage you as amanuensis.' Dictionary in the bookcase
+outside--comma--no, period. 'In reply I would--I wish to--I beg to--we
+beg to say that we should--I should just as soon engage Mona Lisa for
+a stenographer as you.' Period and paragraph.
+
+"'We have,'--comma,--'however,'--comma,--'another position to offer
+you,'--comma,--'that is, as wife to the senior member of this firm.'
+Period. 'The best wages we can--we can offer you are--is the use of
+one large,'--comma,--'slightly damaged heart and a million thanks a
+minute.' Period. 'Trusting that we may be favored with a prompt and
+favorable reply, we am--I are--am--yours very sincerely, truly
+yours,'--no, just say 'yours,' and I'll sign it. By the way, do you
+know what the answer will be?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you mean it?"
+
+"I mean that I know the answer."
+
+"Let me have it."
+
+"Can't you guess?"
+
+"'Yes'?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+A long glum pause till she said, "Am I fired?"
+
+"Of course not."
+
+More pause. She intervened in his silence.
+
+"What do I do next, please?"
+
+He said, of habit, "Why, sail on, and on, and on."
+
+He reached for his basket of unanswered mail. He said:
+
+"I've given you a sample of my style, now you give me a sample of
+yours, and then I'll see if I can afford to keep you as a stenographer
+instead of a wife."
+
+She nodded, went to a typewriter in a corner of his office, and seated
+herself at the musicless instrument. Her heart pit-a-patted as fast as
+her fingers, but she drew up the letter in a handsome style while he
+sat and stared at her and mused upon the strange radiance she brought
+into the office in a kind of aureole.
+
+He grew abruptly serious when Miss Gabus, his regular stenographer,
+entered and stared at the interloper with amazement, comma,
+suspicion, comma, and hostility, period. She murmured a very
+rasping "I beg your pardon," and stepped out, as Marie Louise rose
+from the writing-machine and brought him an extraordinarily
+accurate version of his letter.
+
+And now he had two women on his hands and one on his heart. He dared
+not oust Miss Gabus for the sake of Miss Webling. He dared not show
+his devotion to Marie Louise, though as a matter of fact it made him
+glow like a lighthouse.
+
+He put Mamise to work in the chief clerk's office. It was noted that
+he made many more trips to that office than ever before. Instead of
+pressing the buzzer for a boy or a stenographer, he usually came out
+himself on all sorts of errands. His buzzer did not buzz, but the
+gossip did.
+
+Mamise was vaguely aware of it, and it distressed her till she grew
+furious. She was so furious at Davidge for not being deft enough to
+conceal his affection that she began to resent it as an offense and
+not a compliment.
+
+The impossible Mamise insisted on taking up her residence in one of
+the shanties. When he took the liberty of urging her to live at a
+hotel or at some of the more comfortable homes she snubbed him
+bluntly. When he desperately urged her to take lunch or dinner with
+him she drew herself up and mocked the virtuous scorn of a movie
+stenographer and said:
+
+"Sir! I may be only a poor typist, but no wicked capitalist shall loor
+me to lunch with him. You'd probably drug the wine."
+
+"Then will you--"
+
+"No, I will not go motoring with you. How dare you!"
+
+"May I call, then?"
+
+More as a punishment than a hospitality, she said:
+
+"Yessir--the fourteenth house on the left side of the road is me."
+
+The days were still long and the dark tardy when he marched up the
+street. It was a gantlet of eyes and whispers. He felt inane to an
+imbecility. The whole village was eying the boss on his way to spark a
+stenog. His little love-affair was as clandestine as Lady Godiva's
+famous bareback ride.
+
+He cut his call short after an age-long half-hour of enduring the
+ridicule twinkling in Mamise's eyes. He stayed just late enough for it
+to get dark enough to conceal his return through that street. He was
+furious at the situation and at Mamise for teasing him so. But she
+became all the dearer for her elusiveness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+After the novelty of the joke wore off Mamise grew as uncomfortable as
+he. She was beginning to love him more and her job less. But she was
+determined not to throw away her independence. Pride was her duenna,
+and a ruthless one. She tried to feed her pride on her ambition and on
+an occasional visit to the ship that was to wear her name.
+
+She met Sutton, the prima donna riveter. He was always clattering away
+like a hungry woodpecker, but he always had time to stop and discuss
+his art with her.
+
+Once or twice he let her try the riveter--the "gun," he called it; but
+her thumb was not strong enough to hold the trigger against that
+hundred-and-fifty-pound pressure per square inch.
+
+One day Marie Louise came on Jake Nuddle and Sutton in a wrangle. She
+caught enough of the parley to know that Jake was sneering at Sutton's
+waste of energy and enthusiasm, his long hours and low pay. Sutton
+earned a very substantial income, but all pay was low pay to Jake, who
+was spreading the gospel of sabotage through the shipyard.
+
+Meanwhile the good ship _Clara_, weaned from the dock, floated in the
+basin and received her equipment. And at last the day came when she
+was ready for her trial trip.
+
+That morning the smoke rolled from her funnels in a twisted skein.
+What had once been ore in many a mine, and trees in many a forest, had
+become an individual, as what has been vegetables and fruits and the
+flesh of animals becomes at last a child with a soul, a name, a fate.
+
+It was impossible to think now that the _Clara_ was merely an iron box
+with an engine to push it about. _Clara_ was somebody, a personality,
+a lovable, whimsical, powerful creature. She was "she" to everybody.
+And at last one morning she kicked up her heels and took a long white
+bone in her teeth and went her ways.
+
+The next day _Clara_ came back. There was something about her manner
+of sweeping into the bay, about the proud look of her as she came to a
+halt, that convinced all the watchers in the shipyard of her success.
+
+When they learned that she had exceeded all her contract stipulations
+there was a tumult of rejoicing; for her success was the success of
+every man and lad in the company's employ--at least so thought all who
+had any instinct of team-play and collective pride. A few soreheads
+were glum, or sneered at the enthusiasm of the others. It was strange
+that Jake Nuddle was associated with all of these groups.
+
+_Clara_ was not permitted to linger and rest on her laurels. She had
+work to do. Every ship in the world was working overtime except the
+German Kiel Canal boats. _Clara_ was gone from the view the next
+morning. Mamise missed her as she looked from the office window. She
+mentioned this to Davidge, for fear he might not know. Somebody might
+have stolen her. He explained:
+
+"She's going down to Norfolk to take on a cargo of food for
+England--wheat for the Allies. I'm glad she's going to take
+breadstuffs to people. My mother used to be always going about to
+hungry folks with a basket of food on her arm."
+
+Mamise had Jake and Abbie in to dinner that night. She was all agog
+about the success of _Clara_, and hoped that _Mamise_ would one day do
+as well.
+
+Jake took a sudden interest in the matter. "Did the boss tell you
+where the _Clara_ was goin' to?"
+
+"Yes--Norfolk."
+
+Jake considered his unmentionable cigar a few minutes, then rose and
+mumbled:
+
+"Goin' out to get some more cigars."
+
+Abbie called after him, "Hay, you got a whole half-box left." But Jake
+did not seem to hear the recall.
+
+He came back later cigarless and asked for the box.
+
+"I thought you went out to git some," said Abbie, who felt it
+necessary to let no occasion slip for reminding him of some blunder he
+had made. Jake laughed very amiably.
+
+"Well, so I did, and I went into a cigar-store, at that. But I hadda
+telephone a certain party, long-distance--and I forgot."
+
+Abbie broke in, "Who you got to long-distance to?"
+
+Jake did not answer.
+
+Two days later Davidge was so proud that he came out into the main
+office and told all the clerks of the new distinction.
+
+"They loaded the _Clara_ in record time with wheat for England. She
+sails to-day."
+
+At his first chance to speak to Marie Louise he said:
+
+"You compared her to Little Red Riding Hood--remember? Well, she's
+starting out through the big woods with a lot of victuals for old
+Granny England. If only the wolves don't get her!"
+
+He felt, and Mamise felt, as lonely and as anxious for her as if she
+were indeed a little red-bonneted forest-farer on an errand of mercy.
+
+Ships have always been dear to humankind because of the dangers they
+run and because of the pluck they show in storms and fires, and the
+unending fights they make against wind and wave. But of late they had
+had unheard-of enemies to meet, the submarine and the infernal machine
+placed inside the cargo.
+
+Marie Louise spoke of this at the supper-table that night:
+
+"To think, with so little food in the world and so many starving to
+death, people could sink ships full of wheat!"
+
+On the second day after the _Clara_ set forth on the ocean Marie
+Louise took dictation for an hour and wrote out her letters as fast as
+she could. In the afternoon she took the typewritten transcripts into
+Davidge's office to drop them into his "in" basket.
+
+The telephone rang. His hand went out to it, and she heard him say:
+
+"Mr. Davidge speaking.... Hello, Ed.... What? You're too close to the
+'phone.... That's better.... You're too far away--start all over.... I
+don't get that.... Yes--a life-boat picked up with what--oh, six
+survivors. Yes--from what ship? I say, six survivors from what
+ship?... The _Clara_? She's gone? _Clara_?"
+
+He reeled and wavered in his chair. "What happened--many lost? And the
+boat--cargo--everything--everybody but those six! They got her, then!
+The Germans got her--on her first voyage! God damn their guts!
+Good-by, Ed."
+
+He seemed to be calm, but the hand that held up the receiver groped
+for the hook with a pitiful blind man's gesture.
+
+Mamise could not resist that blundering helplessness. She ran forward
+and took his hand and set the receiver in place.
+
+He was too numb to thank her, but he was grateful. His mother was
+dead. The ship he had named for her was dead. He needed mothering.
+
+Mamise put her hands on his shoulders and gripped them as if to hold
+them together under their burden. She said:
+
+"I heard. I can't tell you how-- Oh, what can we do in such a world!"
+
+He laughed foolishly and said, with a stumbling voice:
+
+"I'll get a German for this--somehow!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Mamise shuddered when she heard the blood-cry wrung out of Davidge's
+agony.
+
+She knew that the ship was more than a ship to him. Its death was as
+the death of many children. It might mean the death of many children.
+She stood over him, weeping for him like another Niobe among her
+slaughtered family. The business man in his tragedy had to have some
+woman at hand to do his weeping for him. He did not know how to sob
+his own heart out.
+
+She felt the vigor of a high anger grip his muscles. When she heard
+him groan, "I'll get a German for this!" somehow it horrified her,
+coming from him; yet it was becoming the watchword of the whole
+nation.
+
+America had stood by for three years feeding Europe's hungry and
+selling munitions to the only ones that could come and get them.
+America had been forced into the war by the idiotic ingenuities of the
+Germans, who kept frustrating all their own achievements, the cruel
+ones thwarting the clever ones; the liars undermining the fighters;
+the wise, who knew so much, not knowing the first thing--that torture
+never succeeded, that a reputation for broken faith is the most
+expensive of all reputations, that a policy of terror and trickery and
+megalomania can accomplish nothing but its own eventual ruin.
+
+America was aroused at last. The German rhinoceros in its blind
+charges had wakened and enraged the mammoth. A need for German blood
+was the frank and undeniable passion of the American Republic. To kill
+enough Germans fast enough to crush them and their power and their
+glory was the acknowledged business of the United States until further
+notice.
+
+The strangest people were voicing this demand. Preachers were
+thundering it across their pulpits, professors across their desks,
+women across their cradles, pacifists across their shattered dreams,
+business men across their counters, "Kill Germans!"
+
+It was a frightful crusade; yet who was to blame for it but the
+Germans and their own self-advertised frightfulness? The world was
+fighting for its life and health against a plague, a new outrush from
+that new plague-spot whence so many floods of barbarism had broken
+over civilization.
+
+They came forth now in gray streams like the torrent of rats that
+pursued the wicked Bishop Hatto to his tower. Only the world was not
+Bishop Hatto, and it did not flee. It gathered to one vast circular
+battle, killing and killing rats upon rats in a frenzy of loathing
+that grew with the butchery.
+
+Countless citizens of German origin fought and died with the
+Americans, but nobody thought of them as Germans now, and least of all
+did they so think of themselves. In the mind of the Allied nations,
+German and vermin were linked in rhyme and reason.
+
+It may be unjust and unsympathetic, but the very best people feel it a
+duty to destroy microbes, insects, and beasts of prey without mercy.
+The Germans themselves had proclaimed their own nature with pride.
+Peaceful Belgium--invaded, burned, butchered, ravished, dismantled,
+mulcted, deported, enslaved--was the first sample of German work.
+
+Davidge had hated Germany's part in the war from the first, for the
+world's sake, for the sake of the little nations trampled and starved
+and the big nations thrown into desperation, and for the insolence and
+omnipresence of the German menace--for the land filled with graves,
+the sea with ships, the air with indiscriminate slaughter.
+
+Now it had come straight home to himself. His own ship was assassinated;
+the hill of wheat she carried had been spilled into the sterile sea.
+Nearly all of her crew had been murdered or drowned. He had a
+blood-feud of his own with Germany.
+
+He was startled to find Mamise recoiling from him. He looked at her
+with a sudden demand:
+
+"Does it shock you to have me hate 'em?"
+
+"No! No, indeed!" she cried. "I wasn't thinking of them, but of you. I
+never saw you before like this. You scared me a little. I didn't know
+you could be so angry."
+
+"I'm not half as angry as I'd like to be. Don't you abominate 'em,
+too?"
+
+"Oh yes--I wish that Germany were one big ship and all the Germans on
+board, and I had a torpedo big enough to blast them all to--where they
+belong."
+
+This wish seemed to him to prove a sufficient lack of affection for
+the Germans, and he added, "Amen!" with a little nervous reaction into
+uncouth laughter.
+
+But this was only another form of his anguish. At such times the
+distraught soul seems to have need of all its emotions and expressions,
+and to run among them like a frantic child.
+
+Davidge's next mood was a passionate regret for the crew, the dead
+engineers and sailors shattered and blasted and cast into the sea, the
+sufferings of the little squad that escaped into a life-boat without
+water or provisions or shelter from the sun and the lashing spray.
+
+Then he pictured the misery of hunger that the ship's cargo would have
+relieved. He had been reading much of late of the Armenian--what word
+or words could name that woe so multitudinous that, like the number of
+the stars, the mind refused to attempt its comprehension?
+
+He saw one of those writhing columns winding through a rocky
+wilderness--old crones knocked aside to shrivel with famine, babies
+withering like blistered flowers from the flattened breasts of their
+mothers dying with hunger, fatigue, blows, violation, and despair. He
+thought of Poland childless and beyond pity; of the Serbian shambles.
+The talons of hunger a millionfold clutched him, and he groaned
+aloud:
+
+"If they'd only stolen my wheat and given it to somebody--to anybody!
+But to pour it into the sea!"
+
+He could not linger in that slough and stay sane. His struggling soul
+broke loose from the depths and hunted safety in self-ridicule:
+
+"I might better have left the wheat at home and never have built the
+fool ship."
+
+He began to laugh again, an imbecile ironic cachinnation.
+
+"The blithering idiot I've been! To go and work and work and work, and
+drive my men and all the machinery for months and months to make a
+ship and put in the engines and send it down and load it, and all for
+some"--a gesture expressed his unspeakable thought--"of a German to
+blow it to hell and gone, with a little clock-bomb in one second!"
+
+In his abysmal discouragement his ideals were all topsy-turvy. He
+burlesqued his own religion as the most earnest constantly do, for we
+all revolve around ourselves as well as our suns.
+
+"What's the use," he maundered--"what's the use of trying to do
+anything while they're alive and at work right here in our country?
+They're everywhere! They swarm like cockroaches out of every hole as
+soon as the light gets low! We've got to blister 'em all to death with
+rough-on-rats before we can build anything that will last. There's no
+stopping them without wiping 'em off the earth."
+
+She did not argue with him. At such times people do not want arguments
+or good counsel or correction. They want somebody to stand by in mute
+fellowship to watch and listen and suffer, too. So Mamise helped
+Davidge through that ordeal. He turned from rage at the Germans to
+contempt for himself.
+
+"It's time I quit out of this and went to work with the army. It makes
+me sick to be here making ships for Germans to sink. The thing to do
+is to kill the Germans first and build the ships when the sea is safe
+for humanity. I'm ashamed of myself sitting in an office shooting with
+a telephone and giving out plans and contracts and paying wages to a
+gang of mechanics. It's me for a rifle and a bayonet."
+
+Mamise had to oppose this:
+
+"Who's going to get you soldiers across the sea or feed you when you
+get there if all the ship-builders turn soldier?"
+
+"Let somebody else do it."
+
+"But who can do it as well as you can? The Germans said that America
+could never put an army across or feed it if she got it there. If you
+go on strike you'll prove the truth of that."
+
+Then she began to chant his own song to him. A man likes to hear his
+nobler words recalled. Here is one of the best resources a woman has.
+Mamise was speaking for him as well as for herself when she said:
+
+"Oh, I remember how you thrilled me with your talk of all the ships
+you would build. You said it was the greatest poem ever written, the
+idea of making ships faster than the Germans could sink them. It was
+that that made me want to be a ship-builder. It was the first big
+ambition I ever had. And now you tell me it's useless and foolish!"
+
+He saw the point without further pressure.
+
+"You're right," he said. "My job's here. It would be selfish and showy
+to knock off this work and grab a gun. I'll stick. It's hard, though,
+to settle down here when everybody else is bound for France."
+
+Mamise was one of those unusual wise persons who do not continue to
+argue a case that has already been won. She added only the warm
+personal note to help out the cold generality.
+
+"There's my ship to finish, you know. You couldn't leave poor _Mamise_
+out there on the stocks unfinished."
+
+The personal note was so warm that he reached out for her. He needed
+her in his arms. He caught her roughly to him and knew for the first
+time the feel of her body against his, the sweet compliance of her
+form to his embrace.
+
+But there was an anachronism to her in the contact. She was in one of
+those moods of exaltation, of impersonal nationalism, that women were
+rising to more and more as a new religion. She was feeling terribly
+American, and, though she had no anger for him and saw no insult in
+his violence, she seemed to be above and beyond mere hugging and
+kissing. She was in a Joan of Arc humor, so she put his hands away,
+yet squeezed them with fervor, for she knew that she had saved him
+from himself and to himself. She had brought him back to his east
+again, and the morning is always wonderful.
+
+She had renewed his courage, however, so greatly that he did not
+despair of her. He merely postponed her, as people were postponing
+everything beautiful and lovable "for the duration of the war."
+
+He reached for the buzzer. Already Mamise heard its rattlesnake
+clatter. But his hand paused and went to hers as he stammered:
+
+"We've gone through this together, and you've helped me--I can't tell
+you how much, honey. Only, I hope we can go through a lot more trouble
+together. There's plenty of it ahead."
+
+She felt proud and meek and dismally happy. She squeezed his big hand
+again in both of hers and sighed, with a smile:
+
+"I hope so."
+
+Then he pressed the buzzer, and Miss Gabus was inside the door with
+suspicious promptitude. Davidge said:
+
+"Mr. Avery, please--and the others--all the others right away. Ask
+them to come here; and you might come back, Miss Gabus."
+
+Mr. Avery, the chief clerk, and other clerks and stenographers,
+gathered, wondering what was about to happen. Some of them came
+grinning, for when they had asked Miss Gabus what was up she had
+guessed: "I reckon he's goin' to announce his engagement."
+
+The office force came in like an ill-drilled comic-opera chorus.
+Davidge waited till the last-comer was waiting. Then he said:
+
+"Folks, I've just had bad news. The _Clara_--they got her! The Germans
+got her. She was blown up by a bomb. She was two days out and going
+like a greyhound when she sank with all on board except six of the
+crew who got away in a life-boat and were picked up by a tramp."
+
+There was a shock of silence, then a hubbub of gasps, oaths, of
+incredulous protests.
+
+Miss Gabus was the first to address Davidge:
+
+"My Gawd! Mr. Davidge, what you goin' to do about it?"
+
+They thought him a man of iron when he said, quietly:
+
+"We'll build some more ships. And if they sink those we'll--build some
+more."
+
+He was a man of iron, but iron can bend and break and melt, and so can
+steel. Yet there is a renewal of strength, and, thanks to Mamise,
+Davidge was recalled to himself, though he was too shrewd or too
+tactful to give her the credit for redeeming him.
+
+His resolute words gave the office people back to their own
+characters or their own reactions and their first phrases. Each
+had something to say. One, "She was such a pretty boat!" another, "Was
+she insured, d'you suppose?" a third, a fourth, and the rest: "The
+poor engineer--and the sailors!" "All that work for nothin'!" "The
+money she cost!" "The Belgians could 'a' used that wheat!" "Those
+Germans! Is there anything they won't do?"
+
+The chief clerk shepherded them back to their tasks. Davidge took up
+the telephone to ask for more steel. Mamise renewed the cheerful
+_rap-rap-rap_ of her typewriter.
+
+The shock that struck the office had yet to rush through the yard.
+There was no lack of messengers to go among the men with the bad word
+that the first of the Davidge ships had been destroyed. It was a
+personal loss to nearly everybody, as it had been to Davidge, for
+nearly everybody had put some of his soul and some of his sweat into
+that slow and painful structure so instantly annulled. The mockery of
+the wasted toil embittered every one. The wrath of the workers was
+both loud and ferocious.
+
+Jake Nuddle was one of the few who did not revile the German plague.
+He was not in the least excited over the dead sailors. They did not
+belong to his union. Besides, Jake did not love work or the things it
+made. He claimed to love the workers and the money they made.
+
+He was tactless enough to say to a furious orator:
+
+"Ah, what's it to you? The more ships the Germans sink the more you
+got to build and the more they'll have to pay you. If Davidge goes
+broke, so much the better. The sooner we bust these capitalists the
+sooner the workin'-man gets his rights."
+
+The orator retorted: "This is war-times. We got to make ships to win
+the war."
+
+Jake laughed. "Whose war is it? The capitalists'. You're fightin' for
+Morgan and Rockefeller to save their investments and to help 'em to
+grind you into the dirt. England and France and America are all
+land-grabbers. They're no better 'n Germany."
+
+The workers wanted a scapegoat, and Jake unwittingly volunteered. They
+welcomed him with a bloodthirsty roar. They called him vigorous
+shipyard names and struck at him. He backed off. They followed. He
+made a crucial mistake; he whirled and ran. They ran after him. Some
+of them threw hammers and bolts. Some of these struck him as he fled.
+Workmen ahead of him were roused by the noise and headed him off.
+
+He darted through an opening in the side of the _Mamise_. The crowd
+followed him, chased him out on an upper deck.
+
+"Throw him overboard! Kill him!" they shouted.
+
+He took refuge behind Sutton the riveter, whose gun had made such
+noise that he had heard none of the clamor. Seeing Jake's white face
+and the mark of a thrown monkey-wrench on his brow, Sutton shut off
+the compressed air and confronted the pursuers. He was naked to the
+waist, and he had no weapon, but he held them at bay while he
+demanded:
+
+"What's the big idea? What you playin'? Puss in a corner? How many of
+yous guys does it take to lick this one gink?"
+
+A burly patriot, who forgot that his name and his accent were
+Teutonic, roared:
+
+"Der sneagin' Sohn off a peach ain't sorry _die Clara_ is by dose tam
+Chermans _gesunken_!"
+
+"What!" Sutton howled. "The _Clara_ sunk? Whatya mean--sunk?"
+
+Bohlmann told him. Sutton wavered. He had driven thousands of rivets
+into the frame of the ship, and a little explosive had opened all the
+seams and ended her days! When at last he understood the _Clara's_
+fate and Nuddle's comments he turned to Jake with baleful calm:
+
+"And you thought it was good business, did you? And these fellers
+was thinkin' about lynchin' you, was they? Well, they're all
+wrong--they're all wrong: we'd ought to save lynchin' for real
+guys. What you need is somethin' like--this!"
+
+His terrific fist lashed out and caught Jake in the right eye. Jake in
+a daze of indignation and amazement went over backward; his head
+struck the steel deck, and his soul went out. When it came back he lay
+still for a while, pretending to be unconscious until the gang had
+dispersed, satisfied, and Sutton was making ready to begin riveting
+again. Then he picked himself up and edged round Sutton, growling:
+
+"I'll fix you for this, you--"
+
+Sutton did not wait to learn what Jake was going to call him. His big
+foot described an upward arc, and Jake a parabola, ending in a drop
+that almost took him through an open hatch into the depth of the hold.
+He saved himself, peering over the edge, too weak for words--hunched
+back, crawled around the steel abyss, and betook himself to a safe
+hiding-place under the tank-top till the siren should blow and
+disperse his enemies.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The office force left pretty promptly on the hour. When Mamise noted
+that desks were being cleared for inaction she began mechanically to
+conform. Then she paused.
+
+On other afternoons she had gone home with the crowd of employees, too
+weary with office routine to be discontent. But now she thought of
+Davidge left alone in his office to brood over his lost ship, the
+brutal mockery of such loving toil. It seemed heartless to her as his
+friend to desert him in the depths. But as one of his stenographers,
+it would look shameless to hang round with the boss. She shifted from
+foot to foot and from resolve to resolve.
+
+Their relations were undergoing as many strains and stresses as a
+ship's frame in the various waves and weathers that confront it. She
+had picked up some knowledge of the amazing twists a ship encounters
+at rest and in motion--stresses in still water, with cargo and
+without, hogging and sagging stresses, seesaw strains, tensile,
+compressive, transverse, racking, pounding; bumps, blows, collisions,
+oscillations, running aground--stresses that crumpled steel or
+scissored the rivets in two.
+
+It was hard to foresee the critical stress that should mean life or
+death to the ship and its people. Some went humbly forth and came home
+with rich cargo; some steamed out in pride and never came back; some
+limped in from the sea racked and ruined; some ran stupidly ashore in
+fogs; some fought indomitably through incredible tempests. Some died
+dramatic deaths on cliffs where tidal waves hammered them to shreds;
+some turned turtle at their docks and went down in the mud. Some led
+long and honorable lives, and others, beginning with glory,
+degenerated into cattle-ships or coastal tramps.
+
+People were but ships and bound for as many destinations and
+destinies. Their fates depended as much and yet as little on their
+pilots and engineers, their engines and their frames. The test of the
+ship and of the person was the daily drudgery and the unforeseen
+emergency.
+
+Davidge believed in preliminary tests of people and boats. Before
+he hired a man or trusted a partner he inquired into his past
+performances. He had been unable to insist on investigation in the
+recent mad scramble for labor due to the sudden withdrawal into the
+national army of nearly every male between twenty-one and thirty-one
+and of hundreds of thousands of volunteers of other ages.
+
+He had given his heart to Marie Louise Webling, of whom he knew little
+except that she would not tell him much. And on her dubious voucher he
+had taken Jake Nuddle into his employ. Now he had to accept them as he
+had to accept steel, taking it as it came and being glad to get any at
+all.
+
+Hitherto he had insisted on preliminary proofs. He wanted no steel in
+a ship's hull or in any part of her that had not behaved well in the
+shop tests, in the various machines that put the metal under bending
+stress, cross-breaking, hammering, drifting, shearing, elongation,
+contraction, compression, deflection, tension, and torsion stresses.
+The best of the steels had their elastic limits; there was none that
+did not finally snap.
+
+Once this point was found, the individual metal was placed according
+to its quality, the responsibility imposed on it being only a tenth of
+its proved capacity. That ought to have been enough of a margin of
+safety. Yet it did not prevent disasters.
+
+People could not always be put to such shop tests beforehand. A
+reference or two, a snap judgment based on first impressions, ushered
+a man or a woman into a place where weakness or malice could do
+incalculable harm. In every institution, as in every structure, these
+danger-spots exist. Davidge, for all his care and knowledge of people,
+could only take the best he could get.
+
+Jake Nuddle had got past the sentry-line with ludicrous ease and had
+contrived already the ruin of one ship. His program, which included
+all the others, had had a little setback, but he could easily regain
+his lost ground, for the mob had vented its rage against him and was
+appeased.
+
+Mamise was inside the sentry-lines, too, both of Davidge's shop and
+his heart. Her purposes were loyal, but she was drifting toward a
+supreme stress that should try her inmost fiber. And at the moment she
+felt an almost unbearable strain in the petty decision of whether to
+go with the clerks or stop with the boss.
+
+Mamise was not so much afraid of what the clerks would say of her. It
+was Davidge that she was protecting. She did not want to have them
+talking about him--as if anything could have stopped them from that!
+
+While she debated between being unselfish enough to leave him
+unconsoled and being selfish enough to stay, she spent so much time
+that the outer office was empty, anyway.
+
+Seeing herself alone, she made a quick motion toward the door. Miss
+Gabus came out, stared violently, and said:
+
+"Was you goin' in?"
+
+"No--oh no!" said Mamise. "I left something in my desk."
+
+She opened her desk, took out a pencil-nub and hurried away,
+ostentatiously passing the other clerks as they struggled across the
+yard to the gate.
+
+She walked to her shanty and found it all pins and needles. She was so
+desperate that she went to see her sister.
+
+Marie Louise found Abbie in her kitchen, sewing buttons on the
+extremely personal property of certain bachelors whom she washed for
+in spite of Jake's high earnings--from which she benefited no more
+than before. If Jake had come into a million, or shattered the world
+to bits and then rebuilt it nearer to his heart's desire, he would not
+have had enough to make much difference to Abbie. Mamise had made many
+handsome presents to Abbie, but somehow they vanished, or at least got
+Abbie no farther along the road to contentment or grace.
+
+Mamise was full of the story of the disaster to the _Clara_. She drew
+Abbie into the living-room away from the children, who were playing in
+the kitchen because it was full of the savor of the forthcoming
+supper.
+
+"Abbie dear, have you heard the news?"
+
+Abbie gasped, "Oh God, is anything happened to Jake--killed or
+arrested or anything?"
+
+"No, no--but _Clara_--the _Clara_--"
+
+"Clara who?"
+
+"The ship, the first ship we built, she's destroyed."
+
+"For the land's sake! I want to know! Well, what you know about
+that!"
+
+Abbie could not rise to very lofty heights of emotion or language over
+anything impersonal. She made hardly so much noise over this tragedy
+as a hen does over the delivery of an egg.
+
+Mamise was distressed by her stolidity. She understood with regret why
+Jake did not find Abbie an ideal inspirational companion. She hated to
+think well of Jake or ill of her sister, but one cannot help receiving
+impressions.
+
+She did her best to stimulate Abbie to a decent warmth, but Abbie was
+as immune to such appeals as those people were who were still
+wondering why America went to war with Germany.
+
+Abbie was entirely perfunctory in her responses to Mamise's pictures
+of the atrocity. She grew really indignant when she looked at the
+clock and saw that Jake was late to dinner. She broke in on Mamise's
+excitement with a distressful:
+
+"And we got steak 'n' cab'ge for supper."
+
+"I must hurry back to my own shack," said Mamise, rising.
+
+"You stay right where you are. You're goin' to eat with us."
+
+"Not to-night, thanks, dear."
+
+She kept no servant of her own. She enjoyed the circumstance of
+getting her meals. She was camping out in her shanty. To-night she
+wanted to be busy about something especially about a kitchen--the
+machine-shop of the woman who wants to be puttering at something.
+
+She was dismally lonely, but she was not equal to a supper at Jake's.
+She would have liked a few children of her own, but she was glad that
+she did not own the Nuddle children, especially the elder two.
+
+The Nuddles had given three hostages to Fortune. Jake cared little
+whether Fortune kept the hostages or not, or whether or not she
+treated them as the Germans treated Belgian hostages.
+
+Little Sister was the oldest of the trio completed by Little Brother
+and a middle-sized bear named Sam. Sis and Sam were juvenile
+anarchists born with those gifts of mischief, envy, indolence, and
+denunciation that Jake and the literary press-agents of the same
+spirit flattered as philosophy or even as philanthropy. Little
+Brother was a quiet, patient gnome with quaint instincts of industry
+and accumulation. He was always at work at something. His mud-pie
+bakery was famous for two blocks. He gathered bright pebbles and
+shells. In the marble season he was a plutocrat in taws and agates.
+Being always busy, he always had time to do more things. He even
+volunteered to help his mother. When he got an occasional penny he
+hoarded it in hiding. He had need to, for Sam borrowed what he could
+and stole what he could not wheedle.
+
+Little Brother was not stingy, but he saved; he bought his mother
+petty gifts once in a while when he had enough to pay for something.
+
+Little Sister and Sam were capable in emotional crises of sympathy or
+hatred to express themselves volubly. Little Brother had no gifts of
+speech. He made gifts of pebbles or of money awkwardly, shyly, with
+few words. Mamise, as she tried to extricate herself from Abbie's
+lassoing hospitality, paused in the door and studied the children,
+contrasting them with the Webling grandchildren who had been born with
+gold spoons in their mouths and somebody to take them out, fill them,
+and put them in again. But luxury seemed to make small difference in
+character.
+
+She mused upon the three strange beings that had come into the world
+as a result of the chance union of Jake and Abbie. Without that they
+would never have existed and the world would have never known the
+difference, nor would they.
+
+Sis and Sam were quarreling vigorously. Little Brother was silent upon
+the hearth. He had collected from the gutter many small stones and
+sticks. They were treasures to him and he was as important about them
+as a miser about his shekels. Again and again he counted them, taking
+a pleasure in their arithmetic. Already he was advanced in mathematics
+beyond the others and he loved to arrange his wealth for the sheer
+delight of arrangement; orderliness was an instinct with him already.
+
+For a time Mamise noted how solemnly he kept at work, building a little
+stone house and painfully making it stand. He was a home-builder
+already.
+
+Sam had paid no heed to the work. But, wondering what Mamise was
+looking at, he turned and saw his brother. A grin stretched his
+mouth. Little Brother grew anxious. He knew that when something he had
+builded interested Sam its doom was close.
+
+"Whass 'at?" said Sam.
+
+"None yer business," said Little Brother, as spunky as Belgium before
+the Kaiser.
+
+"'S'ouse, ain't it?"
+
+"You lea' me 'lone, now!"
+
+"Where d'you git it at?"
+
+"I built it."
+
+"Gimme't!"
+
+"You build you one for your own self now."
+
+"'At one's good enough for me."
+
+"Maw! You make Sam lea' my youse alone."
+
+Mrs. Nuddle moaned: "Sammie, don't bother Little Brother now. You go
+on about your own business."
+
+Smash! splash! Sam had kicked the house into ruins with the side of
+his foot.
+
+Mamise was so angry that before she knew it she had darted at him and
+smacked him with violence. Instantly she was ashamed of herself. Sam
+began to rub his face and yowl:
+
+"Maw, she gimme a swipe in the snoot! She hurt me, so she did."
+
+Mamise was disgusted. Abbie appeared at the door equally disgusted; it
+was intolerable that any one should slap her children but herself. She
+had accepted too much of Mamise's money to be very indignant, but she
+did rise to a wail:
+
+"Seems to me, Mamise, you might keep your hands off my childern."
+
+"I'm sorry. I forgot myself. But Sam is so like his father I just
+couldn't help taking a whack at him. The little bully knocked over his
+brother's house just to hear it fall. When he grows up he'll be just
+as much of a nuisance as Jake and he'll call it syndicalism or
+internationalism or something, just as Jake does."
+
+Jake came in on the scene. He brought home his black eye and a white
+story.
+
+When Abbie gasped, "What on earth's the matter?" he growled: "I bumped
+into a girder. Whatya s'pose?"
+
+Abbie accepted the eye as a fact and the story as a fiction, but she
+knew that, however Jake stood in the yard, as a pugilist he was the
+home champion.
+
+She called Little Sister to bring from the ice-box a slice of the
+steak she had bought for dinner. On the high wages Jake was
+earning--or at least receiving--the family was eating high.
+
+Little Sister told her brother Sam, "It's a shame to waste good meat
+on his old black lamp." And Sam's regret was, "I wisht I'd 'a' gave it
+to um."
+
+Little Sister knew better than to let her father hear any of this, but
+it was only another cruel evidence that great lovers of the public
+welfare are apt to be harshly regarded at home. It is too much to
+expect that one who tenderly considers mankind in the mass should have
+time to be kind to them in particular.
+
+Jake was not even appreciated by Mamise, whom he did appreciate. Every
+time he praised her looks or her swell clothes she acted as if he made
+her mad.
+
+To-night when he found her at the house her first gush of anxiety for
+him was followed by a remark of singular heartlessness:
+
+"But, oh, did you hear of the destruction of the _Clara_?"
+
+"Yes, I heard of the destruction of the _Clara_," he echoed, with a
+sneer. "If I had my way the whole rotten fleet would follow her to the
+bottom of the ocean!"
+
+"Why, Jake!" was Abbie's best.
+
+Jake went on: "And it will, too, or I'm a liar. The Germans will get
+them boats as fast as they build 'em." He laughed. "I tell you them
+Kaiser-boys just eats ships."
+
+"But how were they able to destroy the _Clara_?" Mamise demanded.
+
+"Easiest thing you know. When she laid up at Norfolk they just put a
+bomb into her."
+
+"But how did they know she was going to Norfolk to load?"
+
+"Oh, we--they have ways."
+
+The little slip from "we" to "they" caught Mamise's ear. Her first
+intuition of its meaning was right, and out of her amazement the first
+words that leaped were:
+
+"Poor Abbie!"
+
+Thought, like lightning, breaks through the air in a quick slash from
+cloud to ground. Mamise's whole thought was from zig to zag in some
+such procedure as this, but infinitely swift.
+
+"We--they? That means that Jake considers himself a part of the German
+organization for destruction, the will to ruin. That means that Jake
+must have been involved in the wreck of the _Clara_. That means that
+he deliberately connived at a crime against his country. That means
+that he is a traitor as well as a murderer. That means that my sister
+is the wife of a fiend. Poor Abbie!"
+
+This thought stunned and blinded Mamise a long moment. She heard Jake
+grumbling:
+
+"What ya mean--'poor Abbie!'?"
+
+Mamise was afraid to say. She cast one glance at Jake, and the
+lightning of understanding struck him. He realized what she was
+thinking--or at least he suspected it, because he was thinking of his
+own past. He was realizing that he had met Nicky Easton through
+Mamise, though Mamise did not know this--that is, he hoped she did
+not. And yet perhaps she did.
+
+And now Mamise and Jake were mutually afraid of each other. Abbie
+was altogether in the dark, and a little jealous of Mamise and
+her peculiar secrets, but her general mood was one of stolid
+thoughtlessness.
+
+Jake, suspecting Mamise's suspicion of him, was moved to justify
+himself by one of his tirades against society in general. Abbie, who
+had about as much confidence in the world as an old rabbit in a doggy
+country, had heard Jake thunder so often that his denunciations had
+become as vaguely lulling as a continual surf. Generalizations meant
+nothing to her bovine soul. She was thinking of something else,
+usually, throughout all the fiery Jakiads. While he indicted whole
+nations and denounced all success as a crime against unsuccess she was
+hunting through her work-basket for a good thread to patch Sam's pants
+with.
+
+Abbie was unmoved, but Mamise was appalled. It was her first encounter
+with the abysmal hatred of which some of these loud lovers of mankind
+are capable. Jake's theories had been merely absurd or annoying
+before, but now they grew monstrous, for they seemed to be confirmed
+by an actual crime.
+
+Mamise felt that she must escape from the presence of Jake or attack
+him. She despised him too well to argue with him, and she rose to go.
+
+Abbie pleaded with her in vain to stay to supper. She would not be
+persuaded. She walked to her own bungalow and cooked herself a little
+meal of her own. She felt stained once more with vicarious guilt, and
+wondered what she had done so to be pursued and lassoed by the crimes
+of others.
+
+She remembered that she had lost her chance to clear herself of Sir
+Joseph Webling's guilt by keeping his secret. If she had gone to the
+British authorities with her first suspicion of Sir Joseph and Nicky
+Easton she would have escaped from sharing their guilt. She would
+have been branded as an informer, but only by the conspirators; and
+Sir Joseph himself and Lady Webling might have been saved from
+self-destruction.
+
+Now she was in the same situation almost exactly. Again she had only
+suspicion for her guide. But in England she had been a foreigner and
+Sir Joseph was her benefactor. Here she was in her own country, and
+she owed nothing to Jake Nuddle, who was a low brute, as ruthless to
+his wife as to his flag.
+
+It came to Mamise with a sharp suddenness that her one clear duty was
+to tell Davidge what she knew about Jake. It was not a pretty duty,
+but it was a definite. She resolved that the first thing she did in
+the morning would be to go to Davidge with what facts she had. The
+resolution brought her peace, and she sat down to her meager supper
+with a sense of pleasant righteousness.
+
+Mamise felt so redeemed that she took up a novel, lighted a cigarette,
+and sat down by her lamp to pass a well-earned evening of spinsterial
+respectability. Then the door opened and Abbie walked in. Abbie did
+not think it sisterly to knock. She paused to register her formal
+protest against Mamise's wicked addiction to tobacco.
+
+"I must say, Mamise, I do wisht you'd break yourself of that horbul
+habbut."
+
+Mamise laughed tolerantly. "You were cooking cabbage when I was at
+your house. Why can't I cook this vegetable?"
+
+"But I wa'n't cooking the cabbage in my face."
+
+"You were cooking it in mine. But let's not argue about botany or
+ethics."
+
+Abbie was not aware of mentioning either of those things, but she had
+other matters to discuss. She dropped into a chair, sighing:
+
+"Jake's went out to telephone, and I thought I'd just run over for a
+few words. You see, I--"
+
+"Where was Jake telephoning?"
+
+"I d'know. He's always long-distancin' somebody. But what I come
+for--"
+
+"Doesn't it ever occur to you to wonder?"
+
+"Long as it ain't some woman--or if it is, as long as it's long
+distance--why should I worry my head about it? The thing I wanted to
+speak of is--"
+
+"Didn't it rather make your blood run cold to hear Jake speak as he
+did of the lost ship?"
+
+"Oh, I'm so used to his rantin' it goes in one ear and out the
+other."
+
+"You'd better keep a little of it in your brain. I'm worried about
+your husband, even if you're not, Abbie dear."
+
+"What call you got to worry?"
+
+"I have a ghastly feeling that my brother-in-law is mixed up in the
+sinking of the _Clara_."
+
+"Don't be foolish!"
+
+"I'm trying not to be. But do you remember the night I told you both
+that the _Clara_ was going to Norfolk to take on her cargo? Well, he
+went out to get cigars, though he had a lot, and he let it slip that
+he had been talking on the long-distance telephone. When the _Clara_
+is sunk, he is not surprised. He says, 'We--they have ways.' He
+prophesies the sinking of all the ships Mr. Davidge--"
+
+Abbie seized this name as a weapon of self-defense and mate-defense.
+
+"Oh, you're speakin' for Mr. Davidge now."
+
+"Perhaps. He's my employer, and Jake's, too. I feel under some
+obligations to him, even though Jake doesn't. I feel some obligations
+to the United States, and Jake doesn't. I distrust and abhor Germany,
+and Jake likes her as well as he does us. The background is perfect.
+When such crimes are being done as Germany keeps doing, condoning them
+is as bad as committing them."
+
+"Big words!" sniffed Abbie. "Can't you talk United States?"
+
+"All right, my dear. I say that since Jake is glad the _Clara_ was
+sunk and hopes that more ships will be sunk, he is as bad as the men
+that sank her. And what's more, I have made up my mind that Jake
+helped to sink her, and that he works in this yard simply for a chance
+to sink more ships. Do you get those words of one syllable?"
+
+"No," said Abbie. Ideas of one syllable are as hard to grasp as words
+of many. "I don't know what you're drivin' at a tall."
+
+"Poor Abbie!" sighed Mamise. "Dream on, if you want to. But I'm going
+to tell Mr. Davidge to keep a watch on Jake. I'm going to warn him
+that Jake is probably mixed up in the sinking of that beautiful ship
+he named after his mother."
+
+Even Abbie could not miss the frightful meaning of this. She was one
+of those who never trust experience, one of those who think that, in
+spite of all the horrible facts of the past, horrible things are
+impossible in the future. Higher types of the same mind had gone about
+saying that war was impossible, later insisting that it was impossible
+that the United States should be dragged into this war because it was
+so horrible, and next averring that since this war was so horrible
+there could never be another.
+
+Even Abbie could imagine what would happen if Mamise denounced Jake as
+an accomplice in the sinking of the Clara. It would be so terrible
+that it must be impossible. The proof that Jake was innocent was the
+thought of what would happen to him and to her and their children if
+he were found guilty. She summed it all up in a phrase:
+
+"Mamise, you're plumb crazy!"
+
+"I hope so, but I'm also crazy enough to put Mr. Davidge on his
+guard."
+
+"And have him fire Jake, or get him arrested?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"Ain't you got any sense of decency or dooty a tall?"
+
+"I'm trying to find out."
+
+"Well, I always knew a woman who'd smoke cigarettes would do
+anything."
+
+"I'll do this."
+
+"O' course you won't; but if you did, I'd--why, I'd--why, I just don't
+know what I'd do."
+
+"Would you give up Jake?"
+
+"Give up Jake? Divorce him or something?"
+
+Mamise nodded.
+
+Abbie gasped: "Why, you're positively immor'l! Posi-_tive_-ly! He's
+the father of my childern! I'll stick to Jake through thick and
+thin."
+
+"Through treason and murder, too? You were an American, you know,
+before you ever met him. And I was an American before he became my
+brother-in-law. And I don't intend to let him make me a partner in his
+guilt just because he made you give him a few children."
+
+"I won't listen to another word," cried Abbie. "You're too indecent to
+talk to." And she slammed the door after her.
+
+"Poor Abbie!" said Mamise, and closed her book, rubbed the light out
+of her cigarette, and went to bed.
+
+But not to sleep. Abbie had not argued well, but sometimes that is
+best for the arguments, for then the judge becomes their attorney.
+Mamise tossed on a grid of perplexities. Neither her mind nor her body
+could find comfort.
+
+She rose early to escape her thoughts. It was a cold, raw morning, and
+Abbie came dashing through the drizzle with her shawl over her head
+and her cheeks besprent with tears and rain. She flung herself on
+Mamise and sobbed:
+
+"I ain't slep' a wink all night. I been thinkin' of Jake and the
+childern. I was mad at you last night, but I'm sorry for what I said.
+You're my own sister--all I got in the world besides the three
+childern. And I'm all you got, and I know it ain't in you to go and
+send the father o' my childern to jail and ruin my life. I've had a
+hard life, and so've you, Mamise honey, but we got to be friends and
+love one another, for we're all that's left of our fambly, and it
+couldn't be that one sister would drive the other to distraction and
+drag the family name in the mud. It couldn't be, could it, Mamise?
+Tell me you was only teasin' me! I didn't mean what I said last night
+about you bein' indecent, and you didn't mean what you said about
+Jake, did you, Mamise? Say you didn't, or I'll just die right here."
+
+She had left the door open, and a gust of windy rain came lashing in.
+The world outside was cold and wet, and Abbie was warm and afraid and
+irresistibly pitiful.
+
+Mamise could only hug and kiss her and say:
+
+"I'll see! I'll see!"
+
+When people do not know what their chief mysteries, themselves, will
+do they say, "I'll see."
+
+Mamise thought of Davidge, and she could not promise to leave him in
+ignorance of the menace imminent above him. But when at last she tore
+herself from Abbie's clutching hands and hurried away to the office
+she looked back and saw Abbie out in the rain, staring after her in
+terror and shaking her head helplessly. She could not promise herself
+that she would tell Davidge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+She reached the office late in spite of her early start. Davidge had
+gone. He had gone to Pittsburgh to try to plead for more steel for
+more ships.
+
+The head clerk told her this. He was in an ugly mood, sarcastic about
+Mamise's tardiness, and bitter with the knowledge that all the work of
+building another _Clara_ had to be carried through with its endless
+detail and the chance of the same futility. He was as sick about it as
+a Carlyle who must rewrite a burned-up history, an Audubon who must
+repaint all his pictures.
+
+Davidge had left no good-by for Mamise. This hurt her. She wished that
+she had stopped to tell him good night the afternoon before.
+
+In his prolonged absence Mamise wondered if he were really in
+Pittsburgh or in Washington with Lady Clifton-Wyatt. She experienced
+the first luxury of jealousy; it was aggravated by alarm. She was left
+alone, a prey to the appeals of Abbie, who could not persuade her to
+promise silence.
+
+But the next night Jake was gone. Abbie explained that he had been
+called out of town to a meeting of a committee of his benevolent
+insurance order. Mamise wondered and surmised.
+
+Jake went to meet Nicky Easton and claim his pay for his share in the
+elimination of the _Clara_. Nicky paid him so handsomely that Jake
+lost his head and imagined himself already a millionaire. Strangely,
+he did not at once set about dividing his wealth among his beloved
+"protelariat." He made a royal progress from saloon to saloon, growing
+more and more haughty, and pounding on successive bars with a vigor
+that increased as his articulation effervesced. His secret would
+probably have bubbled out of him if he had not been so offensive that
+he was bounced out of every barroom before he had time to get to the
+explanation of his wealth. In one "poor man's club" he fell asleep
+and rolled off his chair to a comfortable berth among the spittoons.
+
+Next morning Jake woke up with his head swollen and his purse
+vanished. He sought out Nicky and demanded another fee. Nicky laughed
+at his claim; but Jake grew threatening, and Nicky was frightened into
+offering him a chance to win another fortune by sinking another ship.
+He staked Jake to the fare for his return and promised to motor down
+some dark night and confer with him. Jake rolled home in state.
+
+On the same train went a much interested sleuth who detached himself
+from the entourage of Nicky and picked up Jake.
+
+Jake had attracted some attention when he first met Nicky in
+Washington, but the sadly overworked Department of Justice could not
+provide a squad of escorts for every German or pro-German suspect.
+Before the war was over the secret army under Mr. Bielaski reached a
+total of two hundred and fifty thousand, but the number of suspects
+reached into the millions. From Nicky Easton alone a dozen activities
+radiated; and studying him and his communicants was a slow and complex
+task.
+
+Mr. Larrey decided that the best way to get a line on Jake would be to
+take a job alongside him and "watch his work." It was the easiest
+thing in the world to get a job at Davidge's shipyard; and it was
+another of the easiest things in the world to meet Jake, for Jake was
+eager to meet workmen, particularly workmen like Larrey, who would
+listen to reason, and take an interest in the gentle art of slowing up
+production. Larrey was all for sabotage.
+
+One evening Jake invited him to his house for further development. On
+that evening Mamise dropped in. She did not recognize Larrey, but he
+remembered her perfectly.
+
+He could hardly believe his camera eyes at first when he saw the great
+Miss Webling enter a workman's shanty and accept Jake Nuddle's
+introduction:
+
+"Larrey, old scout, this is me sister-in-law. Mamise, shake hands with
+me pal Larrey."
+
+Larrey had been the first of her shadows in New York, but had been
+called off when she proved unprofitable and before she met Easton. And
+now he found her at work in a shipyard where strange things were
+happening! He was all afire with the covey of spies he had flushed.
+His first impulse was to shoot off a wire in code to announce his
+discovery. Then he decided to work this gold-mine himself. It would be
+pleasanter to cultivate this pretty woman than Jake Nuddle, and she
+would probably fall for him like a thousand of brick. But when he
+invited himself to call on her her snub fell on him like a thousand of
+brick. She would not let him see her home, and he was furious till
+Jake explained, "She's sweet on the boss."
+
+Larrey decided that he had better call on Davidge and tip him off to
+the past of his stenographer and get him to place her under
+observation.
+
+The next day Davidge came back from his protracted journey. He had
+fought a winning battle for an allotment of steel. He was boyish with
+the renewal of battle ardor, and boyish in his greeting of Mamise. He
+made no bones of greeting her before all the clerks with a horribly
+embarrassing enthusiasm:
+
+"Lord! but I've been homesick to see you!"
+
+Miss Gabus was disgusted. Mamise was silly with confusion.
+
+Those people who are always afraid of new customs have dreaded public
+life for women lest it should destroy modesty and rob them of the
+protection of guardians, duennas, and chaperons. But the world seems
+to have to have a certain amount of decency to get along on, at all,
+and provides for it among humans about as well as it provides for the
+protection of other plants and animals, letting many suffer and perish
+and some prosper.
+
+The anxious conservatives who are always risking their own souls in
+spasms of anxiety over other people's souls would have given up Mamise
+and Davidge for lost, since she lived alone and he was an unattached
+bachelor. But curiously enough, their characters chaperoned them,
+their jobs and ambitions excited and fatigued them, and their moods of
+temptation either did not coincide or were frustrated by circumstances
+and crowds.
+
+Each knew well what it was to suffer an onset of desperate emotion, of
+longing, of reckless, helpless adoration. But in office hours these
+anguishes were as futile as prayers for the moon. Outside of office
+hours there were other obstacles, embarrassments, interferences.
+
+These protections and ambitions would not suffice forever, any more
+than a mother's vigilance, maidenly timidity, convent walls or
+_yashmaks_ will infallibly prevail. But they managed to kill a good
+deal of time--and very dolefully.
+
+Mamise was in peculiar peril now. She was beginning to feel very sorry
+for herself, and even sorrier for Davidge. She remembered how cruelly
+he had been bludgeoned by the news of the destruction of his first
+ship, and she kept remembering the wild, sweet pangs of her sympathy,
+the strange ecstasy of entering into the grief of another. She
+remembered how she had seized his shoulders and how their hands had
+wrestled together in a common anguish. The remembrance of that
+communion came back to her in flashes of feverish demand for a renewal
+of union, for a consummation of it, indeed. She was human, and nothing
+human was alien to her.
+
+Davidge had spoken of marriage--had told her that he was a candidate
+for her husbandcy. She had laughed at him then, for her heart had been
+full of the new wine of ambition. Like other wines, it had its morning
+after when all that had been so alluring looked to be folly. Her own
+loneliness told her that Davidge was lonely, and that two lonelinesses
+combined would make a festival, as two negatives an affirmative.
+
+When Davidge came back from his trip the joy in his eyes at sight of
+her kindled her smoldering to flame. She would have been glad if he
+had snatched her to his breast and crushed her there. She had that
+womanly longing to be crushed, and he the man's to crush. But fate
+provided a sentinel. Miss Gabus was looking on; the office force stood
+by, and the day's work was waiting to be done.
+
+Davidge went to his desk tremulous; Mamise to her typewriter. She
+hammered out a devil's tattoo on it, and he devoured estimates and
+commercial correspondence, while an aromatic haze enveloped them both
+as truly as if they had been faun and nymph in a bosky glade.
+
+Miss Gabus played Mrs. Grundy all morning and at the noon hour made a
+noble effort to rescue Mamise from any opportunity to cast an evil
+spell over poor Mr. Davidge. Women have a wonderful pity for men that
+other women cultivate! Yet all that Miss Gabus said to Miss Webling
+was:
+
+"Goin' to lunch now, Mi' Swebling?"
+
+And all that Miss Webling said was:
+
+"Not just yet--thank you."
+
+Both were almost swooning with the tremendous significance of the
+moment.
+
+Miss Webling felt that she was defying all the powers of espionage and
+convention when she made so brave as to linger while Miss Gabus left
+the room in short twitches, with the painful reluctance of one who
+pulls off an adhesive plaster by degrees. When at last she was really
+off, Miss Webling went to Davidge's door, feeling as wicked as the
+maid in Ophelia's song, though she said no more than:
+
+"Well, did you have a successful journey?"
+
+Davidge whirled in his chair.
+
+"Bully! Sit down, won't you?"
+
+He thought that no goddess had ever done so divine a thing so
+ambrosially as she when she smiled and shook her incredibly exquisite
+head. He rose to his feet in awe of her. His restless hands, afraid to
+lay hold of their quarry, automatically extracted his watch from his
+pocket and held it beneath his eyes. He stared at it without
+recognizing the hour, and stammered:
+
+"Will you lunch with me?"
+
+"No, thank you!"
+
+This jolted an "Oh!" out of him. Then he came back with:
+
+"When am I going to get a chance to talk to you?"
+
+"You know my address."
+
+"Yes, but--" He thought of that horrible evening when he had marched
+through the double row of staring cottages. But he was determined.
+"Going to be home this evening?"
+
+"By some strange accident--yes."
+
+"By some strange accident, I might drop round."
+
+"Do."
+
+They laughed idiotically, and she turned and glided out.
+
+She went to the mess-hall and moved about, selecting her dishes.
+Pretending not to see that Miss Gabus was pretending not to see her,
+she took her collation to another table and ate with the relish of a
+sense of secret guilt--the guilt of a young woman secretly betrothed.
+
+Davidge kept away from the office most of the afternoon because Mamise
+was so intolerably sweet and so tantalizingly unapproachable. He made
+a pretext of inspecting the works. She had a sugary suspicion of his
+motive, and munched it with strange comfort.
+
+What might have happened if Davidge had called on her in her then mood
+and his could easily be guessed. But there are usually interventions.
+The chaperon this time was Mr. Larrey, the operative of the Department
+of Justice. He also had his secret.
+
+He arrived at Davidge's home just as Davidge finished the composition
+of his third lawn tie and came down-stairs to go. When he saw Larrey
+he was a trifle curt with his visitor. Thinking him a workman and
+probably an ambassador from one of the unions on the usual mission of
+such ambassadors--more pay, less hours, or the discharge of some
+unorganized laborer--Davidge said:
+
+"Better come round to the office in the morning."
+
+"I can't come to your office," said Larrey.
+
+"Why not? It's open to everybody."
+
+"Yeh, but I can't afford to be seen goin' there."
+
+"Good Lord! Isn't it respectable enough for you?"
+
+"Yeh, but--well, I think it's my duty to tip you off to a little slick
+work that's goin' on in your establishment."
+
+"Won't it keep till to-morrow evening?"
+
+"Yeh--I guess so. It's only one of your stenographers."
+
+This checked Davidge. By a quaint coincidence he was about to call on
+one of his stenographers. Larrey amended his first statement:
+"Leastways, I'll say she calls herself a stenographer. But that's only
+her little camouflage. She's not on the level."
+
+Davidge realized that the stenographer he was wooing was not on the
+level. She was in the clouds. But his curiosity was piqued. He
+motioned Larrey to a chair and took another.
+
+"Shoot," he said.
+
+"Well, it's this Miss Webling. Know anything about her?"
+
+"Something," said Davidge. He was too much amused to be angry. He
+thought that Larrey was another of those amateur detectives who
+flattered Germany by crediting her with an omnipresence in evil. He
+was a faithful reader of Ellis Parker Butler's famous sleuth, and he
+grinned at Larrey. "Well, Mr. Philo Gubb, go on. Your story interests
+me."
+
+Larrey reddened. He spoke earnestly, explained who he was, showed his
+credentials, and told what he knew of Miss Webling. He added what he
+imagined Davidge knew.
+
+Davidge found the whole thing too preposterous to be insolent. His
+chivalry in Mamise's behalf was not aroused, because he thought that
+the incident would make a good story to tell her. He drew Larrey out
+by affecting amazed incredulity.
+
+Larrey explained: "She's an old friend of ours. We got the word from
+the British to pick the lady up when she first landed in this country.
+She was too slick for us, I guess, because we never got the goods on
+her. We gave her up after a couple of weeks. Then her trail crossed
+Nicky Easton's once more."
+
+"And who is Nicky Easton?"
+
+"He's a German agent she knew in London--great friend of her adopted
+father's. The British nabbed him once, but he split on the gang, and
+they let him off. Whilst I was trailin' him I ran into a feller named
+Nuddle--he come up to see Easton. I followed him here, and lo and
+behold! Miss Webling turns up, too! And passin' herself off for
+Nuddle's sister-in-law! Nuddle's a bad actor, but she's worse. And she
+pretends to be a poor workin'-girl. Cheese! You should have seen her
+in New York all dolled up!"
+
+Davidge ignored the opportunity to say that he had had the privilege
+of seeing Miss Webling all dolled up. He knew why Mamise was living as
+she did. It was a combination of lark and crusade. He nursed Larrey's
+story along, and asked with patient amusement:
+
+"What's your theory as to her reason for playing such a game?"
+
+He smiled as he said this, but sobered abruptly when Larrey
+explained:
+
+"You lost a ship not long ago, didn't you? You got other ships on the
+ways, ain't you? Well, I don't need to tell you it's good business for
+the Huns to slow up or blow up all the ships they can. Every boat they
+stop cuts down the supplies of the Allies just so much. This Miss
+Webling's adopted father was in on the sinking of the _Lusitania_, and
+this girl was, too, probably. She carried messages between old Webling
+and Easton, and walked right into a little trap the British laid for
+her. She put up a strong fight, and, being an American, was let go.
+But her record got to this country before she did. You ask me what
+she's up to. Well, what should she be up to but the Kaiser's work?
+She's no stenographer, and she wouldn't be here playin' tunes on a
+typewriter unless she had some good business reason. Well, her
+business is--she's a ship-wrecker."
+
+The charge was ridiculous, yet there were confirmations or seeming
+confirmations of it. The mere name of Nicky Easton was a thorn in
+Davidge's soul. He remembered Easton in London at Mamise's elbow, and
+in Washington pursuing her car and calling her "Mees Vapelink."
+
+Davidge promised Larrey that he would look into the matter, and bade
+him good night with mingled respect and fear.
+
+When he set out at length to call on Mamise he was grievously troubled
+lest he had lost his heart to a clever adventuress. He despised his
+suspicions, and yet--somebody had destroyed his ship. He remembered
+how shocked she had been by the news. Yet what else could the worst
+spy do but pretend to be deeply worried? Davidge had never liked Jake
+Nuddle; Mamise's alleged relationship by marriage did not gain
+plausibility on reconsideration. The whim to live in a workman's
+cottage was even less convincing.
+
+Mr. Larrey had spoiled Davidge's blissful mood and his lover's program
+for the evening. Davidge moved slowly toward Mamise's cottage, not as
+a suitor, but as a student.
+
+Larrey shadowed him from force of habit, and saw him going with
+reluctant feet, pausing now and then, irresolute. Davidge was thinking
+hard, calling himself a fool, now for trusting Mamise and now for
+listening to Larrey. To suspect Mamise was to be a traitor to his
+love: not to suspect her was to be a traitor to his common sense and
+to his beloved career.
+
+And the Mamise that awaited the belated Davidge was also in a state of
+tangled wits. She, too, had dressed with a finikin care, as Davidge
+had, neither of them stopping to think how quaint a custom it is for
+people who know each other well and see each other in plain clothes
+every day to get themselves up with meticulous skill in the evening
+like Christmas parcels for each other's examination. Nature dresses
+the birds in the mating season. Mankind with the aid of the
+dressmaker and the haberdasher plumes up at will.
+
+But as Cæsar had his Brutus, Charles I his Cromwell, and Davidge his
+Larrey, so Mamise had her sister Abbie.
+
+Abbie came in unexpectedly and regarded Mamise's costume with no
+illusions except her own cynical ones:
+
+"What you all diked up about?"
+
+Mamise shrugged her eyebrows, her lips, and her shoulders.
+
+Abbie guessed. "That man comin'?"
+
+Mamise repeated her previous business.
+
+"Kind of low neck, don't you think? And your arms nekked."
+
+Mamise drew over her arms a scarf that gave them color rather than
+concealment. Abbie scorned the subterfuge.
+
+"Do you think it's proper to dress like that for a man to come
+callin'?"
+
+"I did think so till you spoke," snapped Mamise in all the bitterness
+of the ancient feud between loveliness unashamed and unlovely shame.
+
+Abbie felt unwelcome. "Well, I just dropped over because Jake's went
+out to some kind of meetin'."
+
+"With whom? Where?"
+
+"Oh, some of the workmen--a lot of soreheads lookin' for more wages."
+
+Mamise was indignant: "The soldiers get thirty dollars a month on a
+twenty-four-hour, seven-day shift. Jake gets more than that a week for
+loafing round the shop about seven hours a day. How on earth did you
+ever tie yourself up to such a rotten bounder?"
+
+Abbie longed for a hot retort, but was merely peevish:
+
+"Well, I ain't seen you marryin' anything better. I guess I'll go
+home. I don't seem to be wanted here."
+
+This was one of those exact truths that decent people must immediately
+deny. Mamise put her arms about Abbie and said:
+
+"Forgive me, dear--I'm a beast. But Jake is such a--" She felt Abbie
+wriggling ominously and changed to: "He's so unworthy of you. These
+are such terrible times, and the world is in such horrible need of
+everybody's help and especially of ships. It breaks my heart to see
+anybody wasting his time and strength interfering with the builders
+instead of joining them. It's like interfering with the soldiers.
+It's a kind of treason. And besides, he does so little for you and the
+children."
+
+This last Abbie was willing to admit. She shed a few tears of
+self-esteem, but she simply could not rise to the heights of suffering
+for anything as abstract as a cause or a nation or a world. She was
+like so many of the air-ships the United States was building then: she
+could not be induced to leave the ground or, if she got up, to glide
+back safely.
+
+She tried now to love her country, but she hardly rose before she
+fell.
+
+"Oh, I know it's tur'ble what folks are sufferin', but--well, the
+Lord's will be done, I say."
+
+"And I say it's mainly the devil's will that's being done!" said
+Mamise.
+
+This terrified Abbie. "I wisht you'd be a little careful of your
+language, Mamise. Swearin' and cigarettes both is pretty much of a
+load for a lady to git by with."
+
+"O Lord!" sighed Mamise, in despair. She was capable of long, high
+flights, but she could not carry such a passenger.
+
+Abbie continued: "And do you think it's right, seein' men here all by
+yourself?"
+
+"I'm not seeing men--but a man."
+
+"But all by yourself."
+
+"I'm not all by myself when he's here."
+
+"You'll get the neighbors talkin'--you'll see!"
+
+"A lot I care for their talk!"
+
+"Why don't you marry him and settle down respectable and have childern
+and--"
+
+"Why don't you go home and take care of your own?"
+
+"I guess I better." And she departed forthwith.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+The two sisters had managed to fray each other's nerves raw. The mere
+fact that Abbie advocated marriage and maternity threw Mamise into a
+cantankerous distaste for her own dreams.
+
+Larrey had delayed Davidge long enough for Mamise to be rid of Abbie,
+but the influence of both Larrey and Abbie was manifest in the
+strained greetings of the caller and the callee. Instead of the
+eagerness to rush into each other's arms that both had felt in the
+morning, Davidge entered Mamise's presence with one thought dominant:
+"Is she really a spy? I must be on my guard." And Mamise was thinking,
+"If he should be thinking what Abbie thought, how odious!"
+
+Thus once more their moods chaperoned them. Love could not attune
+them. She sat; he sat. When their glances met they parted at once.
+
+She mistook his uncertainty for despondency. She assumed that he was
+brooding over his lost ship. Out of a long silence she spoke:
+
+"I wonder if the world will ever forget and forgive?"
+
+"Forget and forgive who--whom, for what?"
+
+"Germany for all she's done to this poor world--Belgium, the
+_Lusitania_, the _Clara_?"
+
+He smiled sadly. "The _Clara_ was a little slow tub compared to the
+_Lusitania_, but she meant a lot to me."
+
+"And to me. So did the _Lusitania_. She nearly cost me my life."
+
+He was startled. "You didn't plan to sail on her?"
+
+"No, but--" She paused. She had not meant to open this subject.
+
+But he was aching to hear her version of what Larrey had told.
+
+"How do you mean--she nearly cost you your life?"
+
+"Oh, that's one of the dark chapters of my past."
+
+"You never told me about it."
+
+"I'd rather not."
+
+"Please!" He said it with a surprising earnestness. He had a sudden
+hope that her confession might be an absolving explanation.
+
+She could not fathom this eagerness, but she felt a desire to release
+that old secret. She began, recklessly:
+
+"Well, I told you how I ran away from home and went on the stage, and
+Sir Joseph Webling--"
+
+"You told me that much, but not what happened before you met him."
+
+"No, I didn't tell you that, and I'm not going to now, but--well, Sir
+Joseph was like a father to me; I never had one of my own--to know and
+remember. Sir Joseph was German born, and perhaps the ruthlessness was
+contagious, for he--well, I can't tell you."
+
+"Please!"
+
+"I swore not to."
+
+"You gave your oath to a German?"
+
+"No, to an English officer in the Secret Service. I'm always
+forgetting and starting to tell."
+
+"Why did you take your oath?"
+
+"I traded secrecy for freedom."
+
+"You mean you turned state's evidence?"
+
+"Oh no, I didn't tell on them. I didn't know what they were up to when
+they used me for-- But I'm skidding now. I want to tell you--terribly.
+But I simply must not. I made an awful mistake that night at Mrs.
+Prothero's in pretending to be ill."
+
+"You only pretended?"
+
+"Yes, to get you away. You see, Lady Clifton-Wyatt got after me,
+accused me of being a spy, of carrying messages that resulted in the
+sinking of ships and the killing of men. She said that the police came
+to our house, and Sir Joseph tried to kill one of them and killed his
+own wife and then was shot by an officer and that they gave out the
+story that Sir Joseph and Lady Webling died of ptomaine poisoning. She
+said Nicky Easton was shot in the Tower. Oh, an awful story she told,
+and I was afraid she'd tell you, so I spirited you away on the pretext
+of illness."
+
+Davidge was astounded at this confirmation of Larrey's story. He
+said:
+
+"But it wasn't true what Lady C.-W. told?"
+
+"Most of it was false, but it was fiction founded on fact, and I
+couldn't explain it without breaking my oath. And now I've pretty
+nearly broken it, after all. I've sprained it badly."
+
+"Don't you want to go on and--finish it off?"
+
+"I want to--oh, how I want to! but I've got to save a few shreds of
+respectability. I kidnapped you the day you were going to tea with
+Lady C.-W. to keep you from her. I wish now I'd let you go. Then you'd
+have known the worst of me--or worse than the worst."
+
+She turned a harrowed glance his way, and saw, to her bewilderment,
+that he was smiling broadly. Then he seized her hands and felt a need
+to gather her home to his arms.
+
+She was so amazed that she fell back to stare at him. Studying his
+radiant face, she somehow guessed that he had known part of her story
+before and was glad to hear her confess it, but her intuition missed
+fire when she guessed at the source of his information.
+
+"You have been talking to Lady Clifton-Wyatt, after all!"
+
+"Not since I saw her with you."
+
+"Then who told you?"
+
+He laughed now, for it pleased him mightily to have her read his heart
+so true.
+
+"The main thing is that you told me. And now once more I ask you: will
+you marry me?"
+
+This startled her indeed. She startled him no less by her brusquerie:
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"And why not?"
+
+"I'll marry no man who is so careless whom he marries as you are."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+The whimsical solemnity of this made him roar. But a man does not love
+a woman the less for being feminine, and when she thwarts him by a
+womanliness she delights him excruciatingly.
+
+But Mamise was in earnest. She believed in one emotion at a time. It
+offended her to have Davidge suggest that the funeral baked meats of
+her tragedy should coldly furnish forth a wedding breakfast. She
+wanted to revel awhile in her elegiac humor and pay full honor to her
+sorrow, full penalty for her guilt. She put aside his amorous
+impatience and returned to her theme.
+
+"Well, after all the evil I have done, I wanted to make some
+atonement. I was involved in the sinking of I don't know how many
+ships, and I wanted to take some part in building others. So when I
+met you and you told me that women could build ships, too, you wakened
+a great hope in me, and an ambition. I wanted to get out in the yards
+and swing a sledge or drive a riveting-gun."
+
+"With those hands?" He laughed and reached for them.
+
+She put them out of sight back of her as one removes dangerous toys
+from the clutch of a child, and went on:
+
+"But you wouldn't let me. So I took up the next best thing, office
+work. I studied that hateful stenography and learned to play a
+typewriter."
+
+"It keeps you nearer to me."
+
+"But I don't want to be near you. I want to build ships. Please let me
+go out in the yard. Please give me a real job."
+
+He could not keep from laughing at her, at such delicacy pleading for
+such toil. His amusement humiliated her and baffled her so that at
+length she said:
+
+"Please go on home. It's getting late, and I don't like you at all."
+
+"I know you don't like me, but couldn't you love me?"
+
+"That's more impossible than liking you, since you won't let me have
+my only wish."
+
+"It's too brutal, I tell you. And it's getting too cold. It would
+simply ruin your perfect skin. I don't want to marry a longshoreman,
+thank you."
+
+"Then I'll thank you to go on home. I'm tired out. I've got to get up
+in the morning at the screech of dawn and take up your ghastly
+drudgery again."
+
+"If you'll marry me you won't have to work at all."
+
+"But work is the one thing I want. So if you'll kindly take yourself
+off I'll be much obliged. You've no business here, anyway, and it's
+getting so late that you'll have all the neighbors talking."
+
+"A lot I care!"
+
+"Well, I care a lot," she said, blandly belying her words to Abbie.
+"I've got to live among them."
+
+It was a miserable ending to an evening of such promise. He felt as
+sheepish as a cub turned out of his best girl's house by a sleepy
+parent, but he had no choice. He rose drearily, fought his way into
+his overcoat, and growled:
+
+"Good night!"
+
+She sighed "Good night!" and wished that she were not so cantankerous.
+The closing of the door shook her whole frame, and she made a step
+forward to call him back, but sank into a chair instead, worn out with
+the general unsatisfactoriness of life, the complicated mathematical
+problem that never comes out even. Marriage is a circle that cannot be
+quite squared.
+
+She sat droopily in her chair for a long while, pondering mankind and
+womankind and their mutual dependence and incompatibility. It would be
+nice to be married if one could stay single at the same time. But it
+was hopelessly impossible to eat your cake and have it, too.
+
+Abbie, watching from her window and not knowing that Davidge had gone,
+imagined all sorts of things and wished that her wild sister would
+marry and settle down. And yet she wished that she herself had stayed
+single, for the children were a torment, and of her husband she could
+only say that she did not know whether he bothered her the more when
+he was away or when he was at home.
+
+When Davidge left Mamise he looked back at the lonely cottage she
+stubbornly and miserably occupied and longed to hale her from it into
+a palace. As he walked home his heart warmed to all the little
+cottages, most of them dark and cheerless, and he longed to change all
+these to palaces, too. He felt sorry for the poor, tired people that
+lived so humbly there and slept now but to rise in the morning to
+begin moiling again.
+
+Sometimes from his office window he surveyed the long lines at the
+pay-windows and felt proud that he could pour so much treasure into
+the hands of the poor. If he had not schemed and borrowed and
+organized they would not have had their wages at all.
+
+But now he wished that there might be no poor and no wages, but
+everybody palaced and living on money from home. That seemed to be the
+idea, too, of his more discontented working-men, but he could not
+imagine how everybody could have a palace and everybody live at ease.
+Who was to build the palaces? Who was to cut the marble from the
+mountains and haul it, and who to dig the foundations and blast the
+steel and fasten the girders together? It was easy for the dreamers
+and the literary loafers and the irresponsible cartoonists to denounce
+the capitalists and draw pictures of them as obese swine wallowing in
+bags of gold while emaciated children put out their lean hands in
+vain. But cartoons were not construction, and the men who would
+revolutionize the world could not, as a rule, keep their own books
+straight.
+
+Material riches were everywhere, provided one had the mental riches to
+go out and get them. Davidge had been as poor as the poorest man at
+his works, but he had sold muscle for money and brains for money. He
+had dreamed and schemed and drawn up tremendous plans while they took
+their pay and went home to their evenings of repose in the bosoms of
+their families or the barrooms of idleness.
+
+Still there was no convincing them of the realization that they could
+not get capital by slandering capitalists, or ease by ease, but only
+by sweat. And so everybody was saying that as soon as this great war
+was over a greater war was coming upon the world. He wondered what
+could be done to stay that universal fury from destroying utterly all
+that the German horror might spare.
+
+Thinking of such things, he forgot, for the nonce, the pangs of
+love.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V
+
+IN WASHINGTON
+
+[Illustration: How quaint a custom it is for people who know each other
+well and see each other in plain clothes every day to get themselves up
+with meticulous skill in the evening like Christmas parcels for each
+other's examination.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The threat of winter was terrifying the long-suffering world. People
+thought of the gales that would harass the poor souls in the clammy
+trenches, the icy winds that would flutter the tents of the men in
+camps, the sleety storms that would lash the workers on the docks and
+on the decks of ships and in the shipyards; the final relentless
+persecution of the refugees, crowded upon the towns that had not
+enough for themselves.
+
+To be cold when one is despondent is a fearsome thing. Mamise woke in
+the chill little cottage and had to leap from her snug bed to a cold
+bathroom, come out chattering to a cold kitchen. Just as her house
+grew a little warm, she had to leave it for a long, windy walk to an
+office not half warm enough.
+
+The air was full of orphan leaves, and Cossack whirlwinds stampeded
+them down the roads as ruthlessly as Uhlans herding Belgian fugitives
+along. The dour autumn seemed to wrench hopes from the heart like
+shriveled leaves, and to fill the air with swirling discouragements.
+The men at work about the ships were numb and often stopped to blow
+upon their aching fingers. The red-hot rivets went in showers that
+threatened to blister, but gave no warmth.
+
+The ambitions of Mamise congealed along with the other stirring
+things. She was sorely tempted to give up the unwomanly battle and
+accept Davidge's offer of a wedding-ring. She had, of course, her
+Webling inheritance to fall back upon, but she had come to hate it so
+as tainted money that she would not touch it or its interest. She put
+it all into Liberty Bonds and gave a good many of those to various
+charities. Not the least of her delights in her new career had been
+her emancipation from slavery to the money Mr. Verrinder had spoken of
+as her wages for aiding Sir Joseph Webling.
+
+A marriage with Davidge was an altogether different slavery, a
+thoroughly patriotic livelihood. It would permit her to have servants
+to wait on her and build her fires. She would go out only when she
+wished, and sleep late of mornings. She would have multitudinous furs
+and a closed and heated limousine to carry her through the white
+world. She could salve her conscience by taking up some of the more
+comfortable forms of war work. She could manage a Red Cross
+bandage-factory or a knitting-room or serve hot dishes in a cozy
+canteen.
+
+At times from sheer creature discomfort she inclined toward matrimony,
+as many another woman has done. These craven moods alternated with
+periods of self-rebuke. She told herself that such a marriage would
+dishonor her and cheat Davidge.
+
+Besides, marriage was not all wedding-bells and luxury; it had its
+gall as well as its honey. Even in divorceful America marriage still
+possesses for women a certain finality. Only one marriage in nine
+ended in divorce that year.
+
+Mamise knew men and women, married, single, and betwixt. She was far,
+indeed, from that more or less imaginary character so frequent in
+fiction and so rare in reality, the young woman who knows nothing of
+life and mankind. Like every other woman that ever lived, she knew a
+good deal more than she would confess, and had had more experience
+than she would admit under oath. In fact, she did not deny that she
+knew more than she wished she knew, and Davidge had found her very
+tantalizing about just how much her experience totaled up.
+
+She had observed the enormous difference between a man and a woman who
+meet occasionally and the same people chained together interminably.
+Quail is a delicacy for invalids and gourmets, but notoriously
+intolerable as a steady diet. On the other hand, bread is forever
+good. One never tires of bread. And a lucky marriage is as perennially
+refreshing as bread and butter. The maddening thing about marriage is
+what makes other lotteries irresistible: after all, capital prizes do
+exist, and some people get them.
+
+Mamise had seen happy mates, rich and poor. In her lonelier hours she
+coveted their dual blessedness, enriched with joys and griefs shared
+in plenty and in privation.
+
+Mamise liked Davidge better than she had ever liked any other man.
+She supposed she loved him. Sometimes she longed for him with a kind
+of ferocity. Then she was afraid of him, of what he would be like as a
+husband, of what she would be like as a wife.
+
+Mamise was in an absolute chaos of mind, afraid of everything and
+everybody, from the weather to wedlock. She had been lured into an
+office by the fascinating advertisements of freedom, a career,
+achievement, doing-your-bit and other catchwords. She had found that
+business has its boredoms no less than the prison walls of home,
+commerce its treadmills and its oakum-picking no less than the jail.
+The cozy little cottage and the pleasant chores of solitude began to
+nag her soul.
+
+The destruction of the good ship _Clara_ had dealt her a heavier blow
+than she at first realized, for the mind suffers from obscure internal
+injuries as the body does after a great shock. She understood what
+bitter tragedies threaten the business man no less than the monarch,
+the warrior, the poet, and the lover, though there has not been many
+an Æschylos or Euripides or Dante to make poetry of the Prometheus
+chained to the rocks of trade with the vulture pay-roll gnawing at his
+profits; the OEdipos in the factory who sees everything gone horribly
+awry; or the slow pilgrim through the business hell with all the
+infernal variations of bankruptcy, strikes, panics, and competition.
+
+The blowing up of the _Clara_ had revealed the pitiful truth that men
+may toil like swarming bees upon a painful and costly structure, only
+to see it all annulled at once by a careless or a malicious stranger.
+The _Clara_ served as a warning that the ship _Mamise_ now on the
+stocks and growing ever so slowly might be never finished, or
+destroyed as soon as done. A pall of discontent was gathering about
+her. It was the turn of that season in her calendar. The weather was
+conspiring with the inner November.
+
+The infamous winter of 1917-18 was preparing to descend upon the
+blackest year in human annals. Everybody was unhappy; there was a
+frightful shortage of food among all nations, a terrifying shortage of
+coal, and the lowest temperature ever known would be recorded.
+America, less unfortunate than the other peoples, was bitterly
+disappointed in herself.
+
+There was food in plenty for America, but not for her confederates.
+The prices were appalling. Wages went up and up, but never quite
+caught the expenses. It was necessary to send enormous quantities of
+everything to our allies lest they perish before we could arrive with
+troops. And Germany went on fiendishly destroying ships, foodstuffs,
+and capital, displaying in every victory a more insatiable cruelty, a
+more revolting cynicism toward justice, mercy, or truth.
+
+The Kaiserly contempt for America's importance seemed to be justified.
+People were beginning to remember Rome, and to wonder if, after all,
+Germany might not crush France and England with the troops that had
+demolished Russia. And then America would have to fight alone.
+
+At this time Mamise stumbled upon an old magazine of the ancient date
+of 1914. It was full of prophecies that the Kaiser would be dethroned,
+exiled, hanged, perhaps. The irony of it was ghastly. Nothing was more
+impossible than the downfall of the Kaiser--who seemed verifying his
+boasts that he took his crown from God. He was praising the strong
+sword of the unconquerable Germany. He was marshaling the millions
+from his eastern front to throw the British troops into the sea and
+smother the France he had bled white. The best that the most hopeful
+could do was to mutter: "Hurry! hurry! We've got to hurry!"
+
+Mamise grew fretful about the delay to the ship that was to take her
+name across the sea. She went to Davidge to protest: "Can't you hurry
+up my ship? If she isn't launched soon I'm going to go mad."
+
+Davidge threw back his head and emitted a noise between laughter and
+profanity. He picked up a letter and flung it down.
+
+"I've just got orders changing the specifications again. This is the
+third time, and the third time's the charm; for now we've got to take
+out all we've put in, make a new set of drawings and a new set of
+castings and pretty blamed near tear down the whole ship and rebuild
+it."
+
+"In the name of Heaven, why?"
+
+"In the name of hades, because we've got to get a herd of railroad
+locomotives to France, and sending them over in pieces won't do. They
+want 'em ready to run. So the powers that be have ordered me to
+provide two hatchways big enough to lower whole locomotives through,
+and pigeonholes in the hold big enough to carry them. As far as the
+_Mamise_ is concerned, that means we've just about got to rub it out
+and do it over again. It's a case of back to the mold-loft for
+_Mamise_."
+
+"And about how much more delay will this mean?"
+
+"Oh, about ninety days or thereabouts. If we're lucky we'll launch her
+by spring."
+
+This was almost worse than the death of the _Clara_. That tragedy had
+been noble; it dealt a noble blow and woke the heart to a noble grief
+and courage. But deferment made the heart sick, and the brain and
+almost the stomach.
+
+Davidge liked the disappointment no better than Mamise did, but he was
+used to it.
+
+"And now aren't you glad you're not a ship-builder? How would you feel
+if you had got your wish to work in the yard and had turned your
+little velvet hands into a pair of nutmeg-graters by driving about ten
+thousand rivets into those plates, only to have to cut 'em all out
+again and drive 'em into an entirely new set of plates, knowing that
+maybe they'd have to come out another time and go back? How'd you like
+that?"
+
+Mamise lifted her shoulders and let them fall.
+
+Davidge went on:
+
+"That's a business man's life, my dear--eternally making things that
+won't sell, putting his soul and his capital and his preparation into
+a pile of stock that nobody will take off his hands. But he has to go
+right on, borrowing money and pledging the past for the future and
+never knowing whether his dreams will turn out to be dollars
+or--junk!"
+
+Mamise realized for the first time the pathos, the higher drama of the
+manufacturer's world, that world which poets and some other literary
+artists do not describe because they are too ignorant, too petty, too
+bookish. They sneer at the noble word _commercial_ as if it were a
+reproach!
+
+Mamise, however, looked on Davidge in his swivel-chair as a kind of
+despondent demigod, a Titan weary of the eternal strife. She tried to
+rise beyond a poetical height to the clouds of the practical.
+
+"What will you do with all the workmen who are on that job?"
+
+Davidge grinned. "They're announcing their monthly strike for higher
+wages--threatening to lay off the force. It'd serve 'em right to take
+'em at their word for a while. But you simply can't fight a labor
+union according to Queensbery rules, so I'll give 'em the raise and
+put 'em on another ship."
+
+"And the _Mamise_ will be idle and neglected for three months."
+
+"Just about."
+
+"The Germans couldn't have done much worse by her, could they?"
+
+"Not much."
+
+"I think I'll call it a day and go home," said Mamise.
+
+"Better call it a quarter and go to New York or Palm Beach or
+somewhere where there's a little gaiety."
+
+"Are you sick of seeing me round?"
+
+"Since you won't marry me--yes."
+
+Mamise sniffed at this and set her little desk in order, aligned the
+pencils in the tray, put the carbons back in the box and the rubber
+cover on the typewriter. Then she sank it into its well and put on her
+hat.
+
+Davidge held her heavy coat for her and could not resist the
+opportunity to fold her into his arms. Just as his arms closed about
+her and he opened his lips to beg her not to desert him he saw over
+her shoulder the door opening.
+
+He had barely time to release her and pretend to be still holding her
+coat when Miss Gabus entered. His elaborate guiltlessness confirmed
+her bitterest suspicions, and she crossed the room to deposit a sheaf
+of letters in Davidge's "in" basket and gather up the letters in his
+"out" basket. She passed across the stage with an effect of absolute
+refrigeration, like one of Richard III's ghosts.
+
+Davidge was furious at Miss Gabus and himself. Mamise was furious at
+them both--partly for the awkwardness of the incident, partly for the
+failure of Davidge's enterprise against her lips.
+
+When Miss Gabus was gone the ecstatic momentum was lost. Davidge
+grumbled:
+
+"Shall I see you to-morrow?"
+
+"I don't know," said Mamise.
+
+She gave him her hand. He pressed it in his two palms and shook his
+head. She shook her head. They were both rebuking the bad behavior of
+the fates.
+
+Mamise trudged homeward--or at least houseward. She was in another of
+her irresolute states, and irresolution is the most disappointing of
+all the moods to the irresolute ones and all the neighbors. It was
+irresolution that made "Hamlet" a five-act play, and only a
+Shakespeare could have kept him endurable.
+
+Mamise was becoming unendurable to herself. When she got to her
+cottage she found it as dismal as an empty ice-box. When she had
+started the fire going she had nothing else to do. In sheer
+desperation she decided to answer a few letters. There was an old one
+from Polly Widdicombe. She read it again. It contained the usual
+invitation to come back to reason and Washington.
+
+Just for something positive to do she resolved to go. There was a
+tonic in the mere act of decision. She wrote a letter. She felt that
+she could not wait so long as its answer would require. She resolved
+to send a telegram.
+
+This meant hustling out into the cold again, but it was something to
+do, somewhere to go, some excuse for a hope.
+
+Polly telegraphed:
+
+  Come without fail dying to see you bring along a scuttle of coal
+  if you can.
+
+Mamise showed Davidge the telegram. He was very plucky about letting
+her go. For her sake he was so glad that he concealed his own
+loneliness. That made her underestimate it. He confirmed her belief
+that he was glad to be rid of her by making a lark of her departure.
+He filled an old suit-case with coal and insisted on her taking it.
+The porter who lugged it along the platform at Washington gave Mamise
+a curious look. He supposed that this was one of those suit-cases full
+of bottled goods that were coming into Washington in such multitudes
+since the town had been decreed absolutely dry. He shook it and was
+surprised when he failed to hear the glug-glug of liquor.
+
+But Polly welcomed the suit-case as if it had been full of that other
+form of carbon which women wear in rings and necklaces. The whole
+country was underheated. To the wheatless, meatless, sweetless days
+there were added the heatless months. Major Widdicombe took his
+breakfasts standing up in his overcoat. Polly and Mamise had theirs in
+bed, and the maids that brought it wore their heaviest clothes.
+
+There were long lines of petitioners all day at the offices of the
+Fuel Administration. But it did little good. All the shops and
+theaters were kept shut on Mondays. Country clubs were closed. Every
+device to save a lump of coal was put into legal effect so that the
+necessary war factories might run and the ships go over the sea. Soon
+there would be gasoleneless Sundays by request, and all the people
+would obey. Bills of fare at home and at hotel would be regulated by
+law. Restaurants would be fined for serving more than one meat to one
+person. Grocers would be fined for selling too much sugar to a family.
+Placards, great billboards, and all the newspapers were filled with
+counsels to save, save, save, and buy, buy, buy Bonds, Bonds, Bonds.
+People grew depressed at all this effort, all this sacrifice with so
+little show of accomplishment.
+
+American troops, except a pitiful few, were still in America and
+apparently doomed to stay. This could easily be proved by mathematics,
+for there were not ships enough to carry them and their supplies. The
+Germans were building up reserves in France, and they had every
+advantage of inner lines. They could hurl an avalanche of men at any
+one of a hundred points of the thin Allied line almost without
+warning, and wherever they struck the line would split before the
+reserves could be rushed up to the crevasse. And once through, what
+could stop them? Indeed, the whisper went about that the Allies had no
+reserves worth the name. France and England were literally "all in."
+
+Success and the hope of success did not make the Germans meek. They
+credited God with a share in their achievement and pinned an Iron
+Cross on Him, but they kept mortgaging His resources for the future.
+Those who had protested that the war had been forced on a peaceful
+Germany and that her majestic fight was all in self-defense came out
+now to confess--or rather to boast--that they had planned this triumph
+all along; for thirty years they had built and drilled and stored up
+reserves. And now they were about to sweep the world and make it a
+German planet.
+
+The peaceful Kaiser admitted that he had toiled for this approaching
+day of glory. His war-weary, hunger-pinched subjects were whipped up
+to further endurance by a brandy of fiery promises, the prospects of
+incalculable loot, vast colonies, mountains of food, and indemnities
+sky-high. They were told to be glad that America had come into the war
+openly at last, so that her untouched treasure-chest could pay the
+bills.
+
+In the whole history of chicken-computation there were probably never
+so many fowls counted before they were hatched--and in the final
+outcome never such a crackling and such a stench of rotten eggs.
+
+But no one in those drear days was mad enough to see the outcome. The
+strategical experts protested against the wasteful "side-shows" in
+Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Saloniki, and the taking of Jerusalem was
+counted merely a pretty bit of Christmas shopping that could not weigh
+against the fall of Kerensky, the end of Russian résistance in the
+Bolshevik upheaval, and the Italian stampede down their own
+mountainsides.
+
+Of all the optimists crazy enough to prophesy a speedy German
+collapse, no one put his finger on Bulgaria as the first to break.
+
+So sublime, indeed, was the German confidence that many in America who
+had been driven to cover because of their Teutonic activities before
+America entered the war began to dream that they, too, would reap a
+great reward for their martyrdom on behalf of the Fatherland.
+
+The premonition of the dawning of _Der Tag_ stirred the heart of Nicky
+Easton, of course. He had led for months the life of a fox in a
+hunt-club county. Every time he put his head out he heard the bay of
+the hounds. He had stolen very few chickens, and he expected every
+moment to be pounced on. But now that he felt assured of a German
+triumph in a little while, he began to think of the future. His heart
+turned again to Mamise.
+
+His life of hiding and stealing about from place to place had
+compelled him to a more ascetic existence than he had been used to.
+His German accent did not help him, and he had found that even those
+heavy persons known as light women, though they had no other virtue,
+had patriotism enough to greet his advances with fierce hostility.
+His dialect insulted those who had relinquished the privilege of being
+insulted, and they would not soil their open palms with German-stained
+money.
+
+In his alliance with Jake Nuddle for the blowing up of the _Clara_,
+and their later communications looking toward the destruction of other
+ships, he kept informed of Mamise. He always asked Jake about her. He
+was bitterly depressed by the news that she was "sweet on" Davidge. He
+was exultant when he learned from Jake that she had given up her work
+in the office and had gone to Washington. Jake learned her address
+from Abbie, and passed it on to Nicky.
+
+Nicky was tempted to steal into Washington and surprise her. But enemy
+aliens were forbidden to visit the capital, and he was afraid to go by
+train. He had wild visions of motoring thither and luring her to a
+ride with him. He wanted to kidnap her. He might force her to marry
+him by threatening to kill her and himself. At least he might make her
+his after the classic manner of his fellow-countrymen in Belgium. But
+he had not force enough to carry out anything so masterful. He was a
+sentimental German, not a warrior.
+
+In his more emotional moods he began to feel a prophetic sorrow for
+Marie Louise after the Germans had conquered the world. She would be
+regarded as a traitress. She had been adopted by Sir Joseph Webling
+and had helped him, only to abandon the cause and go over to the
+enemy.
+
+If Nicky could convert her again to loyalty, persuade her to do some
+brave deed for the Fatherland in redemption of her blacksliding, then
+when _Der Tag_ came he could reveal what she had done. When in that
+resurrection day the graves opened and all the good German spies and
+propagandists came forth to be crowned by _Gott_ and the Kaiser, Nicky
+could lead Marie Louise to the dual throne, and, describing her
+reconciliation to the cause, claim her as his bride. And the Kaiser
+would say, "_Ende gut, alles gut!_"
+
+Never a missionary felt more sanctity in offering salvation to a lost
+soul by way of repentance than Nicky felt when he went to the house of
+an American friend and had Mamise called on the long-distance
+telephone.
+
+Mamise answered, "Yes, this is Miss Webling," to the faint-voiced
+long-distance operator, and was told to hold the wire. She heard:
+"All ready with Washington. Go ahead." Then she heard a timid query:
+
+"Hallow, hallow! Iss this Miss Vapelink?"
+
+She was shocked at the familiar dialect. She answered:
+
+"This is Miss Webling, yes. Who is it?"
+
+"You don'd know my woice?"
+
+"Yes--yes. I know you--"
+
+"Pleass to say no names."
+
+"Where are you?"
+
+"In Philadelphia."
+
+"All right. What do you want?"
+
+"To see you."
+
+"You evidently know my address."
+
+"You know I cannot come by Vashington."
+
+"Then how can I see you?"
+
+"You could meet me some place, yes?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"It is important, most important."
+
+"To whom?"
+
+"To you--only to you. It is for your sake."
+
+She laughed at this; yet it set her curiosity on fire, as he hoped it
+would. He could almost hear her pondering. But what she asked was:
+
+"How did you find my address?"
+
+"From Chake--Chake Nuttle."
+
+He could not see the wild look that threw her eyes and lips wide. She
+had never dreamed of such an acquaintance. The mere possibility of it
+set her brain whirling. It seemed to explain many things, explain them
+with a horrible clarity. She dared not reveal her suspicions to Nicky.
+She said nothing till she heard him speak again:
+
+"Vell, you come, yes?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"You could come here best?"
+
+"No, it's too far."
+
+"By Baltimore we could meet once?"
+
+"All right. Where? When?"
+
+"To-morrow. I do not know Baltimore good. Ve could take ride by
+automobile and talk so. Yes?"
+
+"All right." This a little anxiously.
+
+"To-morrow evening. I remember it is a train gets there from
+Vashington about eight. I meet you. Make sure nobody sees you take
+that train, yes?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You know people follow people sometimes."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I trust you alvays, Marie Louise."
+
+"All right. Good-by."
+
+"Goot-py, Marie Louise."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+While Mamise was talking her telephone ear had suffered several sharp
+and painful rasps, as if angry rattlesnakes had wakened in the
+receiver.
+
+The moment she put it up the bell rang. Supposing that Nicky had some
+postscript to add, she lifted the receiver again. Her ear was as
+bewildered as your tongue when it expects to taste one thing and
+tastes another, for it was Davidge's voice that spoke, asking for her.
+She called him by name, and he growled:
+
+"Good Lord! is that you? Who was the fascinating stranger who kept me
+waiting so long?"
+
+"Don't you wish you knew?" she laughed. "Where are you now? At the
+shipyard?"
+
+"No, I'm in Washington--ran up on business. Can I see you to-night?"
+
+"I hope so--unless we're going out--as I believe we are. Hold the
+wire, won't you, while I ask." She came back in due season to say,
+"Polly says you are to come to dinner and go to a dance with us
+afterward."
+
+"A dance? I'm not invited."
+
+"It's a kind of club affair at a hotel. Polly has the right to take
+you--no end of big bugs will be there."
+
+"I'm rusty on dancing, but with you--"
+
+"Thanks. We'll expect you, then. Dinner is at eight. Wrap up well.
+It's cold, isn't it?"
+
+He thought it divine of her to think of his comfort. The thought of
+her in his arms dancing set his heart to rioting. He was singing as he
+dressed, and as he rode put to Grinden Hall, singing a specimen of the
+new musical insanity known as "jazz"--so pestilential a music that
+even the fiddlers capered and writhed.
+
+The Potomac was full of tumultuous ice, and the old Rosslyn bridge
+squealed with cold under the motor. It was good to see the lights of
+the Hall at last, and to thaw himself out at the huge fireplace.
+
+"Lucky to get a little wood," said Major Widdicombe. "Don't know what
+we'll do when it's gone. Coal is next to impossible."
+
+Then the women came down, Polly and Mamise and two or three other
+house guests, and some wives of important people. They laid off their
+wraps and then decided to keep them on.
+
+Davidge had been so used to seeing Mamise as a plainly clad,
+discouraged office-hack that when she descended the stairs and paused
+on the landing a few steps from the floor, to lift her eyebrows and
+her lip-corners at him, he was glad of the pause.
+
+"Break it to me gently," he called across the balustrade.
+
+She descended the rest of the way and advanced, revealed in her
+complete height and all her radiant vesture. He was dazed by her
+unimagined splendor.
+
+As she gave him her hand and collected with her eyes the tribute in
+his, she said:
+
+"Break what to you gently?"
+
+"You!" he groaned. "Good Lord! Talk about 'the glory that was Greece
+and the grandeur that was Rome'!"
+
+With amiable reciprocity she returned him a compliment on his evening
+finery.
+
+"The same to you and many of them. You are quite stunning in
+décolleté. For a pair of common laborers, we are certainly gaudy."
+
+Polly came up and greeted Davidge with, "So you're the fascinating
+brute that keeps Marie Louise down in the penitentiary of that awful
+ship-factory."
+
+Davidge indicated her brilliance and answered: "Never again. She's
+fired! We can't afford her."
+
+"Bully for you," said Polly. "I suppose I'm an old-fashioned,
+grandmotherly sort of person, but I'll be damned if I can see why a
+woman that can look as gorgeous as Marie Louise here should be
+pounding typewriter keys in an office. Of course, if she had to-- But
+even then, I should say that it would be her solemn religious duty to
+sell her soul for a lot of glad-rags.
+
+"A lot of people are predicting that women will never go back to the
+foolish frills and furbelows of before the war; but--well, I'm no
+prophetess, but all I can say is that if this war puts an end to the
+dressmaker's art, it will certainly put civilization on the blink.
+Now, honestly, what could a woman accomplish in the world if she
+worked in overalls twenty-four hours a day for twenty-four years--what
+could she make that would be more worth while than getting herself all
+dressed up and looking her best?"
+
+Davidge said: "You're talking like a French aristocrat before the
+Revolution; but I wish you could convince her of it."
+
+Mamise was trying to take her triumph casually, but she was thrilled,
+thrilled with the supreme pride of a woman in her best clothes--in and
+out of her best clothes, and liberally illuminated with jewelry. She
+was now something like a great singer singing the highest note of her
+master-aria in her best rôle--herself at once the perfect instrument
+and the perfect artist.
+
+Marie Louise went in on Davidge's arm. The dining-room was in gala
+attire, the best silver and all of it out--flowers and candles. But
+the big vault was cold; the men shivered and marveled at the women,
+who left their wraps on the backs of their chairs and sat up in no
+apparent discomfort with shoulders, backs, chests, and arms naked to
+the chill.
+
+Polly was moved to explain to the great folk present just who Mamise
+was. She celebrated Mamise in her own way.
+
+"To look at Miss Webling, would you take her for a perfect nut? She
+is, though--the worst ever. Do you know what she has done? Taken up
+stenography and gone into the office of a ship-building gang!"
+
+The other squaws exclaimed upon her with various out-cries of
+amazement.
+
+"What's more," said Mamise, "I live on my salary."
+
+This was considered incredible in the Washington of then. Mamise
+admitted that it took management.
+
+Mamise said: "Polly, can you see me living in a shanty cooking my own
+breakfast and dinner and waiting on myself and washing my own dishes?
+And for lunch going to a big mess-hall, waiting on myself, too, and
+eating on the swollen arm of a big chair?"
+
+Polly shook her head in despair of her. "Let those do it that have
+to. Nobody's going to get me to live like a Belgian refugee without
+giving me the same excuse."
+
+Mamise suddenly felt that her heroism was hardly more than a silly
+affectation, a patriotic pose. In these surroundings the memory of her
+daily life was disgusting, plain stupidity. Here she was in her
+element, at her superlative. She breathed deeply of the atmosphere of
+luxury, the incense of rich food served ceremoniously to resplendent
+people.
+
+"I'm beginning to agree with you, Polly. I don't think I'll ever go
+back to honest work again."
+
+She thought she saw in Davidge's eyes a gleam of approval. It occurred
+to her that he was renewing his invitation to her to become his wife
+and live as a lady. She was not insulted by the surmise.
+
+When the women departed for the drawing-room, the men sat for a while,
+talking of the coal famine, the appalling debts the country was
+heaping into mountains--the blood-sweating taxes, the business end of
+the war, the prospect for the spring campaign on the Western Front,
+the avalanche of Russia, the rise of the Bolsheviki, the story that
+they were in German pay, the terrible toll of American lives it would
+take to replace the Russian armies, and the humiliating delay in
+getting men into uniform, equipped, and ferried across the sea. The
+astounding order had just been promulgated, shutting down all industry
+and business for four days and for the ten succeeding Mondays in order
+to eke out coal; this was regarded as worse than the loss of a great
+battle. Every aspect of the war was so depressing that the coroner's
+inquest broke up at once when Major Widdicombe said:
+
+"I get enough of this in the shop, and I'm frozen through. Let's go in
+and jaw the women."
+
+Concealing their loneliness, the men entered the drawing-room with the
+majestic languor of lions well fed.
+
+Davidge paused to study Mamise from behind a smokescreen that
+concealed his stare. She was listening politely to the wife of Holman,
+of the War Trade Board. Mrs. Holman's stories were always long, and
+people were always interrupting them because they had to or stay mute
+all night. Davidge was glad of her clatter, because it gave him a
+chance to revel in Mamise. She was presented to his eyes in a kind of
+mitigated silhouette against a bright-hued lamp-shade. She was seated
+sidewise on a black Chinese chair. On the back of it her upraised arm
+rested. Davidge's eyes followed the strange and marvelous outline
+described by the lines of that arm, running into the sharp rise of a
+shoulder, like an apple against the throat, the bizarre shape of the
+head in its whimsical coiffure, the slope of the other shoulder
+carrying the caressing glance down that arm to the hand clasping a
+sheaf of outspread plumes against her knee, and on along to where one
+quaint impossible slipper with a fantastic high heel emerged from a
+stream of fabric that flowed on out to the train.
+
+Then with the vision of honorable desire he imagined the body of her
+where it disappeared below the shoulders into the possession of the
+gown; he imagined with a certain awe what she must be like beneath all
+those long lines, those rounded surfaces, those eloquent wrinkles with
+their curious little pockets full of shadow, among the pools of light
+that satin shimmers with.
+
+In other times and climes men had worn figured silks and satins and
+brocades, had worn long gowns and lace-trimmed sleeves, jeweled
+bonnets and curls, but now the male had surrendered to the female his
+prehistoric right to the fanciful plumage. These war days were grown
+so austere that it began to seem wrong even for women to dress with
+much more than a masculine sobriety. But the occasion of this ball had
+removed the ban on extravagance.
+
+The occasion justified the maximum display of jewelry, too, and Mamise
+wore all she had. She had taken her gems from their prison in the
+safe-deposit box in the Trust Company cellar. They seemed to be glad
+to be at home in the light again. They reveled in it, winking,
+laughing, playing a kind of game in which light chased light through
+the deeps of color.
+
+The oddity of the feminine passion for precious stones struck Davidge
+sharply. The man who built iron ships to carry freight wondered at the
+curious industry of those who sought out pebbles of price, and
+polished them, shaped them, faceted them, and fastened them in metals
+of studied design, petrified jellies that seemed to quiver yet defied
+steel.
+
+He contrasted the cranes that would lift a locomotive and lower it
+into the hold of one of his ships with the tiny pincers with which a
+lapidary picked up a diamond fleck and sealed it in platinum. He
+contrasted the pneumatic riveter with the tiny hammers of the
+goldsmith. There seemed to be no less vanity about one than the other.
+The work of the jeweler would outlast the iron hull. A diamond as
+large as a rivet-head would cost far more than a ship. Jewels, like
+sonnets and symphonies and flower-gardens, were good for nothing, yet
+somehow worth more than anything useful.
+
+He wondered what the future would do to these arts and their
+patronesses. The one business of the world now was the manufacture,
+transportation, and efficient delivery of explosives.
+
+He could understand how offensive bejeweled and banqueted people were
+to the humble, who went grimy and weary in dirty overalls over their
+plain clothes to their ugly factories and back to their uglier homes.
+
+It was a consummation devoutly to be wished that nobody should spend
+his life or hers soiled and tired and fagged with a monotonous task.
+It seemed hard that the toiling woman and the wife and daughter of the
+toiler might not alleviate their bleak persons with pearl necklaces
+about their throats, with rubies pendant from their ears, and their
+fingers studded with sapphire and topaz.
+
+Yet it did not look possible, somehow. And it seemed better that a few
+should have them rather than none at all, better that beauty should be
+allowed to reign somewhere than nowhere during its brief perfection.
+
+And after all, what proof was there that the spoliation of the rich
+and the ending of riches would mean the enrichment of the poor?
+When panics came and the rich fasted the poor starved. Would the
+reduction of the opulent and the elevation of the paupers all to the
+same plain average make anybody happier? Would the poor be glad to
+learn that they could never be rich? With nobody to envy, would
+contentment set in? With ambition rated as a crime, the bequeathing
+of comfort to one's children rendered impossible, the establishment
+of one's destiny left to the decision of boards and by-laws, would
+there be satisfaction? The Bolsheviki had voted "universal happiness."
+It would be interesting to see how well Russia fared during the
+next year and how universally happiness might be distributed.
+
+He frowned and shook his head as if to free himself from these
+nettlesome riddles and left them to the Bolshevist Samaritans to solve
+in the vast laboratory where the manual laborers at last could work
+out their hearts' desires, with the upper class destroyed and the even
+more hateful middle class at their mercy.
+
+It was bitter cold on the way to the ballroom in the Willard Hotel,
+and Davidge in his big coat studied Mamise smothered in a voluminous
+sealskin overcoat. This, too, had meant hardship for the poor. Many
+men had sailed on a bitter voyage to arctic regions and endured every
+privation of cold and hunger and peril that this young woman might
+ride cozy in any chill soever. The fur coat had cost much money, but
+little of it had fallen into the frosted hands of the men who clubbed
+the seal to death on the ice-floes. The sleek furrier in the warm city
+shop, when he sold the finished garment, took in far more than the men
+who went out into the wilderness and brought back the pelts. That did
+not seem right; yet he had a heavy rent to pay, and if he did not
+create the market for the furs, the sealers would not get paid at all
+for their voyage.
+
+A division of the spoils that would rob no one, nor kill the industry,
+was beyond Davidge's imagining. He comforted himself with the thought
+that those loud mouths that advertised solutions of these labor
+problems were fools or liars or both; and their mouths were the tools
+they worked with most.
+
+The important immediate thing to contemplate was the fascinating head
+of Mamise, quaintly set on the shapeless bulk of a sea-lion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Davidge had been a good dancer once, and he had not entirely neglected
+the new school of foot improvisation, so different from the old set
+steps.
+
+Mamise was amazed to find that the strenuous business man had so much
+of the faun in his soul. He had evidently listened to the pipes of Pan
+and could "shake a sugar-heel" with a practised skill. There was a
+startling authority in the firmness with which he gathered her in and
+swept her through the kaleidoscopic throng, now dipping, now skipping,
+now limping, now running.
+
+He gripped the savory body of Mamise close to him and found her to his
+whim, foreseeing it with a mysterious prescience. Holding her thus
+intimately in the brief wedlock of the dance, he began to love her in
+a way that he could think of only one word for--_terrible_.
+
+She seemed to grow afraid, too, of the spell that was befogging them,
+and sought rescue in a flippancy. There was also a flattering spice of
+jealousy in what she murmured:
+
+"You haven't spent all your afternoons and evenings building ships,
+young man!"
+
+"No?"
+
+"What cabarets have you graduated from?"
+
+He quoted her own words, "Don't you wish you knew?"
+
+"No."
+
+"One thing is certain. I've never found in any of 'em as light a
+feather as you."
+
+"Are you referring to my head or my feet?"
+
+"Your blessed feet!"
+
+His arm about her tightened to a suffocation, and he whirled her in a
+delirium of motion.
+
+"That's unfair!" she protested, affrighted yet delighted by the fire
+of his ecstasy in their union. The music stopped, and she clung to him
+dizzily while he applauded with the other dancers till the band
+renewed the tune. She had regained her mental with her bodily
+equilibrium, and she danced more staidly; yet she had seen into the
+crater of his heart and was not sorry that it existed.
+
+The reprise of the dance was brief, and he had to surrender her from
+his embrace. He was unwontedly rhapsodic. "I wish we could sail on and
+on and on forever."
+
+"Forever is a long time," she smiled.
+
+"May I have the next dance?"
+
+"Certainly not! Take Polly round and pay for your supper. But
+don't--"
+
+"Don't what?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+Polly was taken for the next dance, and he was glad of it, but he
+suffered at seeing how perfectly Mamise footed it with a young
+officer who also knew how to compel her to his whim. Davidge wondered
+if Mamise could be responding to this fellow as keenly as she
+responded to himself. The thought was intolerable. She could not be
+so wanton. It would amount to a hideous infidelity. Moorish jealousy
+smoldered in his heart, and he cursed public dancing as an infamous,
+an unbelievable promiscuity. Yet when he had Polly Widdicombe for
+the next dance, her husband had no cause for jealousy. Polly was a
+temperate dancer, all gaiety, estheticism plus athleticism.
+
+Davidge kept twisting his head about to see how Mamise comported
+herself. He was being swiftly wrung to that desperate condition in
+which men are made ready to commit monogamy. He felt that he could not
+endure to have Mamise free any longer.
+
+He presented himself to her for the next dance.
+
+She laughed. "I'm booked."
+
+He blanched at the treacherous heartlessness and sat the dance
+out--stood it out, rather, among the superfluous men on the
+side-lines. A morose and ridiculous gloom possessed him at seeing
+still a fourth stranger with his arms about Mamise, her breast to his
+and her procedure obedient to his. Worse yet, when a fifth insolent
+stranger cut in on the twin stars, Mamise abandoned her fourth
+temporary husband for another with a levity that amounted to
+outrageous polyandry.
+
+Davidge felt no impulse to cut in. He disliked dancing so intensely
+that he wanted to put an end to the abomination, reform it altogether.
+He did not want to dance between those white arms so easily forsworn.
+He wanted to rescue Mamise from this place of horror and hale her away
+to a cave with no outlook on mankind.
+
+It was she who sought him where he glowered. Perhaps she understood
+him. If she did, she was wise enough to enjoy the proof of her sway
+over him and still sane enough to take a joy in her triumph.
+
+She introduced her partner--Davidge would almost have called the
+brute a paramour. He did not get the man's name and was glad of
+it--especially as the hunter deserted her and went after his next
+Sabine.
+
+"You've lost your faithful stenographer," was the first phrase of
+Mamise's that Davidge understood.
+
+"Why so?" he grumbled.
+
+"Because this is the life for me. I've been a heroine and a war-worker
+about as long as I can. I'm for the fleshpots and the cold-cream jars
+and the light fantastic. Aren't you going to dance with me any more?"
+
+"Just as you please," Davidge said, with a singularly boyish
+sulkiness, and wondered why Mamise laughed so mercilessly:
+
+"Of course I please."
+
+The music struck up an abandoned jig, but he danced with great dignity
+till his feet ran away with him. Then he made off with her again in
+one of his frenzies, and a laughter filled his whole being.
+
+She heard him growl something.
+
+"What did you say?" she said.
+
+"I said, 'Damn you!'"
+
+She laughed so heartily at this that she had to stop dancing for a
+moment. She astonished him by a brazen question:
+
+"Do you really love me as much as that?"
+
+"More," he groaned, and they bobbed and ducked and skipped as he
+muttered a wild anachronism:
+
+"If you don't marry me I'll murder you."
+
+"You're murdering me now. May I breathe, please?"
+
+He was furious at her evasion of so solemn a proposal. Yet she was so
+beautifully alive and aglow that he could not exactly hate her. But he
+said:
+
+"I won't ask you again. Next time you can ask me."
+
+"All right; that's a bet. I'll give you fair warning."
+
+And then that dance was over, and Mamise triumphant in all things. She
+was tumultuously hale and happy, and her lover loved her.
+
+To her that hath--for now, whom should Mamise see but Lady Clifton-Wyatt?
+Her heart ached with a reminiscent fear for a moment; then a malicious
+hope set it going again. Major Widdicombe claimed Mamise for the next
+dance, and extracted her from Davidge's possession. As they danced
+out, leaving Davidge stranded, Mamise noted that Lady C.-W. was
+regarding Davidge with a startled interest.
+
+The whirl of the dance carried her close to Lady Clifton-Wyatt, and
+she knew that Lady C.-W. had seen her. Broken glimpses revealed to her
+that Lady C.-W. was escorting her escort across the ballroom floor
+toward Davidge.
+
+She saw the brazen creature tap Davidge's elbow and smile, putting out
+her hand with coquetry. She saw her debarrass herself of her
+companion, a French officer whose exquisite horizon-blue uniform was
+amazingly crossed with the wound and service chevrons of three years'
+warfaring. Nevertheless, Lady Clifton-Wyatt dropped him for the
+civilian Davidge. Mamise, flitting here and there, saw that Davidge
+was being led to the punch-altar, thence to a lonely strip of chairs,
+where Lady C.-W. sat herself down and motioned him to drop anchor
+alongside.
+
+Mamise longed to be near enough to hear what she could guess: her
+enemy's artless prelude followed by gradual modulations to her main
+theme--Mamise's wicked record.
+
+Mamise wished that she had studied lip-reading to get the details. But
+this was a slight vexation in the exultance of her mood. She was
+serene in the consciousness that Davidge already knew the facts about
+her, and that Lady Clifton-Wyatt's gossip would fall with the dreary
+thud of a story heard before. So Mamise's feet flew, and her heart
+made a music of its own to the tune of:
+
+"Thank God, I told him!"
+
+She realized, as never before, the tremendous comfort and convenience
+of the truth. She had been by instinct as veracious as a politely bred
+person may be, but now she understood that the truth is mighty good
+business. She resolved to deal in no other wares.
+
+This resolution lasted just long enough for her to make a hasty
+exception: she would begin her exclusive use of the truth as soon as
+she had told Polly a neat lie in explanation of her inexplicable
+journey to Baltimore.
+
+Lady C.-W. was doing Mamise the best turn in her power. Davidge was
+still angry at Mamise's flippancy in the face of his ardor. But Lady
+C.-W.'s attack gave the flirt the dignity of martyrdom. When Lady
+C.-W. finished her subtly casual account of all that Mamise had done
+or been accused of doing, Davidge crushed her with the quiet remark:
+
+"So she told me."
+
+"She told you that!"
+
+"Yes, and explained it all!"
+
+"She would!" was the best that Lady Clifton-Wyatt could do, but she
+saw that the case was lost. She saw that Davidge's gaze was following
+Mamise here and there amid the dancers, and she was sportswoman enough
+to concede:
+
+"She is a beauty, anyway--there's no questioning that, at least."
+
+It was the canniest thing she could have done to re-establish herself
+in Davidge's eyes. He felt so well reconciled with the world that he
+said:
+
+"You wouldn't care to finish this dance, I suppose?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Lady Clifton-Wyatt was democratic--in the provinces and the
+States--and this was as good a way of changing the subject as any. She
+rose promptly and entered the bosom of Davidge. The good American who
+did not believe in aristocracies had just time to be overawed at
+finding himself hugging a real Lady with a capital L when the music
+stopped.
+
+It is an old saw that what is too foolish to be said can be sung.
+Music hallows or denatures whatever it touches. It was quite proper,
+because quite customary, for Davidge and Lady Clifton-Wyatt to stand
+enfolded in each other's embrace so long as a dance tune was in the
+air. The moment the musicians quit work the attitude became indecent.
+
+Amazing and eternal mystery, that custom can make the same thing mean
+everything, or nothing, or all the between-things. The ancient
+Babylonians carried the idea of the permissible embrace to the
+ultimate intimacy in their annual festivals, and the good women
+doubtless thought no more of it than a woman of to-day thinks of
+waltzing with a presentable stranger. They went home to their husbands
+and their housework as if they had been to church. Certain Bolsheviki,
+even in the year 1918, put up placards renewing the ancient
+Mesopotamian custom, under the guise of a community privilege and a
+civic duty.
+
+And yet some people pretend to differentiate between fashions and
+morals!
+
+But nobody at this dance was foolish enough to philosophize. Everybody
+was out for a good time, and a Scotsman from the British embassy came
+up to claim Lady Clifton-Wyatt's hand and body for the next dance.
+Davidge had been mystically attuned anew to Mamise, and he found her
+in a mood for reconciliation. She liked him so well that when the
+Italian aviator to whom she had pledged the "Tickle Toe" came to
+demand it, she perjured herself calmly and eloped with Davidge. And
+Davidge, instead of being alarmed by her easy morals, was completely
+reassured.
+
+But he found her unready with another perjury when he abruptly asked
+her:
+
+"What are you doing to-morrow?"
+
+"Let me see," she temporized in a flutter, thinking of Baltimore and
+Nicky.
+
+"If you've nothing special on, how about a tea-dance? I'm getting
+addicted to this."
+
+"I'm afraid I'm booked up for to-morrow," she faltered. "Polly keeps
+the calendar. Yes, I know we have some stupid date--I can't think just
+what. How about the day after?"
+
+The deferment made his amorous heart sick, and to-morrow's to-morrow
+seemed as remote as Judgment Day. Besides, as he explained:
+
+"I've got to go back to the shipyard to-morrow evening. Couldn't you
+give me a lunch--an early one at twelve-thirty?"
+
+"Yes, I could do that. In fact, I'd love it!"
+
+"And me too?"
+
+"That would be telling."
+
+At this delicious moment an insolent cub in boots and spurs cut in and
+would not be denied. Davidge was tempted to use his fists, but Mamise,
+though she longed to tarry with Davidge, knew the value of tantalism,
+and consented to the abduction. For revenge Davidge took up with Polly
+and danced after Mamise, to be near her. He followed so close that
+the disastrous cub, in a sudden pirouette, contrived to swipe Polly
+across the shin and ankle-bones with his spur.
+
+She almost swooned of agony, and clung to Davidge for support, mixing
+astonishing profanity with her smothered groans. The cub showered
+apologies on her, and reviled "Regulations" which compelled him to
+wear spurs with his boots, though he had only a desk job.
+
+Polly smiled at him murderously, and said it was nothing. But Mamise
+saw her distress, rid herself of the hapless criminal and gave Polly
+her arm, as she limped through the barrage of hurtling couples. Polly
+asked Davidge to retrieve her husband from the sloe-eyed ambassadress
+who was hypnotizing him. She wailed to Mamise:
+
+"I know I'm marked for life. I ought to have a wound-chevron for this.
+I've got to go home and put my ankle in splints. I'll probably have to
+wear it in a sling for a month. I'd like to kill the rotten hound that
+put me out of business. And I had the next dance with that beautiful
+Rumanian devil! You stay and dance with your ship-builder!"
+
+Mamise could not even think of it, and insisted on bidding good night
+to the crestfallen Davidge. He offered to ride out home with her, but
+Polly refused. She wanted to have a good cry in the car.
+
+Davidge bade Mamise good night, reminded her that she was plighted to
+luncheon at twelve-thirty, and went to the house of the friend he was
+stopping with, the hotels being booked solid for weeks ahead. He was
+nursing a stern determination to endure bachelordom no longer.
+
+Mamise was thinking of Davidge tenderly with one of her brains, while
+another segment condoled with Polly. But most of her wits were engaged
+in hunting a good excuse for her Baltimore escapade the next
+afternoon, and in discarding such implausible excuses as occurred to
+her.
+
+Bitter chill it was, and these owls, for all their feathers, were
+a-cold. Major Widdicombe was chattering.
+
+"I danced myself into a sweat, and now my undershirt is all icicles. I
+know I'll die of pneumonia."
+
+He shifted his foot, and one of his spurs grazed the ankle of Polly,
+who was snuggling to him for warmth.
+
+She yowled: "My Gawd! My yankle! You'll not last long enough for
+pneumonia if you touch me again."
+
+He was filled with remorse, but when he tried to reach round to
+embrace her, she would none of him.
+
+When they got to the bridge, they were amazed at the lazy old Potomac.
+It was a white torment of broken ice, roaring and slashing and
+battering the piers of the ancient bridge ominously, huge sheets
+clambering up and falling back split and broken, with the uproar of an
+attack on a walled town.
+
+The chauffeur went to full speed, and the frosty boards shrilled under
+the flight.
+
+The house was cold when they reached it, and Mamise's room was like a
+storage-vault. She tore off her light dancing-dress and shivered as
+she stripped and took refuge in a cobwebby nightgown. She threw on a
+heavy bathrobe and kept it on when she crept into the icy interstice
+between the all-too-snowy sheets.
+
+She had forgotten to explain to Polly about her Baltimore venture, and
+she shivered so vigorously that sleep was impossible to her palsied
+bones. She grew no warmer from besetting visions of the battle-front.
+She tried to shame herself out of her chill by contrasting her opulent
+bed with the dreadful dugouts in France, the observation posts, the
+shell-riddled ruins, where millions somehow existed. Again, as at
+Valley Forge, American soldiers were marching there in the snow
+barefooted, or in rags or in wooden sabots, for lack of ships to get
+new shoes across.
+
+Yet, in these frozen hells there were not men enough. The German
+offensive must not find the lines so sparsely defended. Men must be
+combed out of every cranny of the nations and herded to the slaughter.
+America was denying herself warmth in order to build shells and to
+shuttle the ships back and forth. There was need of more women,
+too--thousands more to nurse the men, to run the canteens, to mend the
+clothes, to warm men's hearts _via_ their stomachs, and to take their
+minds off the madness of war a little while. The Salvation Army would
+furnish them hot doughnuts in the trenches and heat up their courage.
+Actors and actresses were playing at all the big cantonments now.
+Later they would be going across to play in France--one-night stands,
+two a day in Picardy.
+
+Suddenly Mamise felt the need to go abroad. In a kind of burlesque of
+the calling of the infant Samuel, she sat up in her bed, startled as
+by a voice calling her to a mission. She had been an actress, a
+wanderer, a performer in cheap theaters, a catcher of late trains, a
+dweller in rickety hotels. She knew cold, and she had played half clad
+in draughty halls.
+
+She had escaped from the life and had tried to escape the memory of
+it. But now that she was so cold she felt that nothing was so pitiful
+as to be cold. She understood, with a congealing vividness, how those
+poor droves of lads in bitterer cold were suffering, scattered along
+the frontiers of war like infinite flocks of sheep caught in a
+blizzard. She felt ashamed to be here shivering in this palatial
+misery when she might be sharing the all-but-unbearable squalor of the
+soldiers.
+
+The more she recoiled from the hardships the more she felt the
+impulse. It would be her atonement.
+
+She would buy a trombone and retire into the wilderness to practise
+it. She would lay her dignity, her aristocracy, her pride, on the
+altar of sacrifice, and go among the despondent soldiers as a Sister
+of Gaiety. Perhaps Bill the Blackfaceman would be going over--if he
+had not stayed in Germany too long and been interned there. To return
+to the team with him, being the final degradation, would be the final
+atonement. She felt that she was called, called back. There could be
+nothing else she would hate more to do; therefore she would love to do
+that most of all.
+
+She would lunch with Davidge to-morrow, tell him her plan, bid him
+farewell, go to Baltimore, learn Nicky's secret, thwart it one way or
+another--and then set about her destiny.
+
+She abhorred the relapse so utterly that she wept. The warm tears
+refreshed her eyes before they froze on her cheeks, and she fell
+asleep in the blissful assurance of a martyrdom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+The next morning Mamise woke in her self-warmed bed, at the nudge of a
+colored maid bundled up like an Eskimo, who carried a breakfast-tray
+in mittened hands.
+
+Mamise said: "Oh, good morning, Martha. I'll bathe before breakfast if
+you'll turn on the hot water, please."
+
+"Hot water? Humph! Pipes done froze last night, an' bus' loose this
+mo'nin', and fill the kitchen range with water an' bus' loose again.
+No plumber here yit. Made this breakfuss on the gas-stove. That's
+half-froze, tew. I tell you, ma'am, you're lucky to git your coffee
+nohow. Better take it before it freezes, tew."
+
+Mamise sighed and glanced at the clock. The reproachful hands stood at
+eleven-thirty.
+
+"Did the clock freeze, too? That can't be the right time!"
+
+"Yessum, that's the raht tahm."
+
+"Great heavens!"
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+Mamise sat up, drew the comforters about her back, and breakfasted
+with speed. She dressed with all the agility she could muster.
+
+She regretted the bath. She missed it, and so must we all. In modern
+history, as in modern fiction, it is not nice in the least for the
+heroine--even such a dubious heroine as Mamise--to have a bathless
+day. As for heroes, in the polite chronicles they get at least two
+baths a day: one heroic cold shower in the morning and one hot tub in
+the late afternoon before getting into the faultless evening attire.
+This does not apply to heroes of Russian masterpieces, of course, for
+they never bathe. ("Why should they," my wife puts in, "since they're
+going to commit suicide, anyway?")
+
+But the horrors of the Great War included this atrocity, that the
+very politest people came to know the old-fashioned luxury of an
+extra-dry life. There was a time when cleanliness was accounted as
+ungodliness and the Christian saints anathematized the bath as an
+Oriental pollution. During our war of wars there was a vast amount of
+helpless holy living.
+
+Exquisite gentlemen kept to their clothes for weeks at a time and grew
+rancid and lousy among the rats that were foul enough to share their
+stinking dens with them. If these gentlemen were wounded, perchance,
+they added stale blood, putrefaction, and offal to their abominable
+fetor.
+
+And women who had been pretty and soapy and without smell, and who had
+once blanched with shame at the least maculation, lived with these
+slovenly men and vermin and dead horses and old dead soldiers and
+shared their glorious loathsomeness.
+
+The world acquired a strong stomach, and Mamise's one skip-bath day
+must be endured. If the indecency ever occurred again it will be left
+unmentioned. Heaven knows that even this morning she looked pure
+enough when she was dressed.
+
+Mamise found that Polly was still in bed, giving her damaged ankle as
+an excuse. She stuck it out for Mamise's inspection, and Mamise
+pretended to be appalled at the bruise she could almost see.
+
+Mamise remembered her plan to go abroad and entertain the soldiers.
+Polly tried to dissuade her from an even crazier scheme than
+ship-building, but ended by promising to telephone her husband to look
+into the matter of a passport for her.
+
+Despite her best efforts, it was already twelve-thirty and Mamise had
+not left the house. She was afraid that Davidge would be miffed. Polly
+suggested telephoning the hotel.
+
+Those were bad days for telephoners. The wires were as crowded as
+everything else.
+
+"It will take an hour to get the hotel," said Mamise, "another hour to
+page the man. I'll make a dash for it. He'll give me a little grace, I
+know."
+
+The car was not ready when she got to the door. The engine was balky
+and bucky with the cold, and the chauffeur in a like mood. The roads
+were sleety and skiddy, and required careful driving.
+
+Best of all, when she reached the bridge at last, she found it closed
+to traffic. The Potomac had been infected by the war spirit. In sheer
+Hunnishness it had ravaged its banks, shearing away boat-houses and
+piers, and carrying all manner of wreckage down to pound the old
+aqueduct bridge with. The bridge was not expected to live.
+
+It did, but it was not intrusted with traffic till long after the
+distraught Mamise had been told that the only way to get to Washington
+was by the Highway Bridge from Alexandria, and this meant a détour of
+miles. It gave Mamise her first and only grand rounds through Fort
+Myer and the Arlington National Cemetery. She felt sorry for the
+soldiers about the cold barracks, but she was in no mood to respond to
+the marble pages of the Arlington epic.
+
+The night before she had beheld in a clear vision the living hosts in
+Flanders and France, but here under the snow lay sixteen thousand
+dead, two thousand a hundred and eleven heroes under one monument of
+eternal anonymity--dead from all our wars, and many of them with their
+wives and daughters privileged to lie beside them.
+
+But the mood is everything, and Mamise was too fretful to rise to this
+occasion; and when her car had crept the uneasy miles and reached the
+Alexandria bridge and crossed it, and wound through Potomac Park, past
+the Washington Monument standing like a stupendous icicle, and reached
+the hotel, she was just one hour late.
+
+Davidge had given her up in disgust and despair, after vain efforts to
+reach her at various other possible luncheon-places. He searched them
+all on the chance that she might have misunderstood the rendezvous.
+And Mamise spent a frantic hour trying to find him at some hotel. He
+had registered nowhere, since a friend had put him up. The sole result
+of this interesting game of two needles hunting each other through a
+haystack was that Davidge went without lunch and Mamise ate alone.
+
+In the late afternoon Davidge made another try. He finally got Polly
+Widdicombe on the telephone and asked for Mamise. Polly expressed her
+amazement.
+
+"Why, she just telephoned that she was staying in town to dine with
+you and go to the theater."
+
+"Oh!" said the befuddled Davidge. "Oh, of course! Silly of me!
+Good-by!"
+
+Now he was indeed in a mental mess. Besides, he had another engagement
+to dinner. He spent a long, exasperating hour in a telephone-chase
+after his host, told a poor lie to explain the necessity for breaking
+the engagement, and spent the rest of the evening hunting Mamise in
+vain.
+
+When he took the train for his shipyard at last he was in a hopeless
+confusion between rage at Mamise and fear that some mishap had
+befallen her. It would have been hard to tell whether he loved her or
+hated her the more.
+
+But she, after giving up the pursuit of him, had taken up an inquiry
+into the trains to Baltimore. The time was now too short for her to
+risk a journey out to Grinden Hall and back for a suit-case, in view
+of the Alexandria détour. She must, therefore, travel without baggage.
+Therefore she must return the same night. She found, to her immense
+relief, that this could be done. The seven-o'clock train to Baltimore
+reached there at eight, and there was a ten-ten train back.
+
+She had not yet devised a lie to appease Polly with, but now an
+inspiration came to her. She had told Davidge that she was dining out
+with Polly somewhere; consequently it would be safe to tell Polly that
+she was dining out with Davidge somewhere. The two would never meet to
+compare notes. Besides, it is pleasanter to lie by telephone. One
+cannot be seen to blush.
+
+She called up Grinden Hall and was luckily answered by what Widdicombe
+called "the ebony maid with the ivory head." Mamise told her not to
+summon her lame mistress to the telephone, but merely to say that Miss
+Webling was dining with Mr. Davidge and going to the theater with him.
+She made the maid repeat this till she had it by heart, then rang
+off.
+
+This was the message that Polly received and later transmitted to
+Davidge for his bewilderment.
+
+To fill the hours that must elapse before her train could leave,
+Mamise went to one of those moving-picture shows that keep going
+without interruption. Public benefactors maintain them for the
+salvation of women who have no homes or do not want to go to them
+yet.
+
+The moving-picture service included the usual news weekly, as usual
+leading one to marvel why the stupid subjects shown were selected from
+all the fascinating events of the time. Then followed a doleful
+imitation of Mr. Charles Chaplin, which proved by its very fiasco the
+artistry of the original.
+
+The _cinema de résistance_ was a long and idiotic vampire picture in
+which a stodgy creature lured impossible males to impossible ruin by
+wiles and attitudes that would have driven any actual male to flight,
+laughter, or a call for the police. But the audience seemed to enjoy
+it, as a substitute, no doubt, for the old-fashioned gruesome
+fairy-stories that one accepts because they are so unlike the tiresome
+realities. Mamise wondered if vampirism really succeeded in life. She
+was tempted to try a little of it some time, just as an experiment, if
+ever opportunity offered.
+
+In any case, the picture served its main purpose. It whiled away the
+dull afternoon till the dinner hour. She took her dinner on the train,
+remembering vividly how her heart history with Davidge had begun on a
+train. She missed him now, and his self-effacing gallantry.
+
+The man opposite her wanted to be cordial, but his motive was ill
+concealed, and Mamise treated him as if he didn't quite exist.
+Suddenly she remembered with a gasp that she had never paid Davidge
+for that chair he gave up to her. She vowed again that she would not
+forget. She felt a deep remorse, too, for a day of lies and tricks.
+She regretted especially the necessity of deceiving Davidge. It was
+her privilege to hoodwink Polly and other people, but she had no right
+to deceive Davidge. She was beginning to feel that she belonged to
+him.
+
+She resolved to atone for these new transgressions, too, as well as
+her old, by getting over to France as soon as possible and subjecting
+herself to a self-immolation among hardships. After the war--assuming
+that the war would soon end and that she would come out of it
+alive--afterward she could settle down and perhaps marry Davidge.
+
+Reveling in these pleasantly miserable schemes, she was startled to
+find Baltimore already gathering round the train. And she had not even
+begun to organize her stratagems against Nicky Easton. She made a
+hasty exit from the car and sought the cab-ranks outside.
+
+From the shadows a shadowy man semi-detached himself, lifted his hat,
+and motioned her to an open door. She bent her head down and her
+knees up and entered a little room on wheels.
+
+Nicky had evidently given the chauffeur instructions, for as soon as
+Nicky had come in, doubled up, and seated himself the limousine moved
+off--into what adventures? Mamise was wondering.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VI
+
+IN BALTIMORE
+
+[Illustration: "So I have already done something more for Germany. That's
+splendid. Now tell me what else I can do." Nicky was too intoxicated with
+his success to see through her thin disguise.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Mamise remembered her earlier visits to Baltimore as a tawdry young
+vaudevillette. She had probably walked from the station, lugging her
+own valise, to some ghastly theatrical boarding-house. Perhaps some
+lover of hers had carried her baggage for her. If so, she had
+forgotten just which one of her experiences he was.
+
+Now she hoped to be even more obscure and unconsidered than she had
+been then, when a little attention was meat and drink, and her name in
+the paper was a sensation. She knew that publicity, like love, flees
+whoso pursueth and pursues who flees it, but she prayed that the rule
+would be proved by an exception to-night, and that she might sneak out
+as anonymously as she had sneaked in.
+
+Nicky Easton was a more immediate problem. He was groping for her
+hands. When he found them she was glad that she had her gloves on.
+They were chaperoned, too, as it were, by their heavy wraps. She was
+fairly lost in her furs and he in a burly overcoat, so that when in a
+kind of frenzy he thrust one cumbrous arm about her the insulation was
+complete. He might as well have been embracing the cab she was in.
+
+But the insolence of the intention enraged her, and she struggled
+against him as a she-bear might rebuff a too familiar bruin--buffeted
+his arms away and muttered:
+
+"You imbecile! Do you want me to knock on the glass and tell the
+driver to let me out?"
+
+"_Nein doch_!"
+
+"Then let me alone or I will."
+
+Nicky sighed abysmally and sank back. He said nothing at all to her,
+and she said the same to him while long strips of Baltimorean marble
+stoops went by. They turned into Charles Street and climbed past its
+statue-haunted gardens and on out to the north.
+
+They were almost at Druid Hill Park before Mamise realized that she
+was wasting her time and her trip for nothing. She spoke angrily:
+
+"You said you wanted to see me. I'm here."
+
+Nicky fidgeted and sulked:
+
+"I do not neet to told you now. You have such a hatink from me, it is
+no use."
+
+"If you had told me you simply wanted to spoon with me I could have
+stayed at home. You said you wanted to ask me something."
+
+"I have my enswer. It is not any neet to esk."
+
+Mamise was puzzled; her wrath was yielding to curiosity. But she could
+not imagine how to coax him out of silence.
+
+His disappointment coaxed him. He groaned:
+
+"_Ach Gott_, I am so lunly. My own people doand trust me. These
+Yenkees also not. I get no chence to proof how I loaf my _Vaterland_.
+But the time comes soon, and I must make patience. _Eile mit Weile!_"
+
+"You'd better tell me what's on your mind," Mamise suggested, but he
+shook his head. The car rolled into the gloom of the park, a gloom
+rather punctuated than diminished by the street-lamps. Mamise realized
+that she could not extort Nicky's secret from him by asserting her own
+dignity.
+
+She wondered how to persuade him, and found no ideas except such silly
+schemes as were suggested by her memory of the vampire picture. She
+hated the very passage of such thoughts through her mind, but they
+kept returning, with an insistent idea that a patriotic vampire might
+accomplish something for her country as Delilah and Judith had
+"vamped" for theirs. She had never seen a vampire exercise her
+fascinations in a fur coat in a dark automobile, but perhaps the dark
+was all the better for her purpose.
+
+At any rate, she took the dare her wits presented her, and after a
+struggle with her own mutinous muscles she put out her hand and sought
+Nicky's, as she cooed:
+
+"Come along, Nicky, don't be so cantankerous."
+
+His hand registered the surprise he felt in the fervor of its clutch:
+
+"But you are so colt!"
+
+She insinuated, "You couldn't expect me to make love to you the very
+first thing, could you?"
+
+"You mean you do like me?"
+
+Her hands wringing his told the lie her tongue refused. And he,
+encouraged and determined to prove his rating with her, flung his arm
+about her again and drew her, resisting only in her soul, close to
+him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+But when his lips hunted hers she hid them in her fur collar; and he,
+imputing it to coquetry, humored her, finding her delicate timidity
+enhancing and inspiring. He chuckled:
+
+"You shall kiss me yet."
+
+"Not till you have told me what you sent for me for."
+
+"No, feerst you must give me one to proof your good fate--your good
+face--" He was trying to say "good faith."
+
+She was stubborn, but he was more obstinate still, and he had the
+advantage of the secret.
+
+And so at last she sighed "All right," and put up her cheek to pay the
+price. His arms tightened about her, and his lips were not content
+with her cheek. He fought to win her lips, but she began to tear off
+her gloves to scratch his eyes out if need be for release.
+
+She was revolted, and she would have marred his beauty if he had not
+let her go. Once freed, she regained her self-control, for the sake of
+her mission, and said, with a mock seriousness:
+
+"Now, be careful, or I won't listen to you at all."
+
+Sighing with disappointment, but more determined than ever to make her
+his, he said:
+
+"Feerst I must esk you, how is your feelink about Chermany?"
+
+"Just as before."
+
+"Chust as vich 'before'? Do you loaf Chermany or hate?"
+
+She was permitted to say only one thing. It came hard:
+
+"I love her, of course."
+
+"_Ach, behüt' dich, Gott!_" he cried, and would have clasped her
+again, but she insisted on discipline. He began his explanation.
+
+"I did told you how, to safe my life in England, I confessed
+somethings. Many of our people here will not forgive. My only vay to
+get back vere I have been is to make--as Americans say--to make myself
+skvare by to do some big vork. I have done a little, not much, but
+more can be if you help."
+
+"What could I do?"
+
+"Much things, but the greatest--listen once: our Chermany has no fear
+of America so long America is on this side of the Atlentic Ozean.
+Americans build ships; Chermany must destroy fester as they build.
+Already I have made one ship less for America. I cannot pooblish
+advertisink, but my people shall one day know, and that day comes
+soon; _Der Tag_ is almost here--you shall see! Our army grows alvays,
+in France; and England and France can get no more men. Ven all is
+ready, Chermany moves like a--a avalenche down a mountain and covers
+France to the sea.
+
+"On that day our fleet--our glorious ships--comes out from Kiel Canal,
+vere man holds them beck like big dogs in leash. Oh those beautiful
+day, Chermany conquers on lent and on sea. France dies, and England's
+navy goes down into the deep and comes never back.
+
+"_Ach Gott_, such a day it shall be--when old England's empire goes
+into history, into ancient history vit Roossia and Rome and Greece and
+Bebylonia.
+
+"England gone, France gone, Italy gone--who shall safe America and her
+armies and her unborn ships, and her cannon and shell and air-ships
+not yet so much as begun?
+
+"_Der Tag_ shall be like the lest day ven _Gott_ makes the graves open
+and the dead come beck to life. The Americans shall fall on knees
+before our Kaiser, and he shall render chudgment. Such a payink!
+
+"Now the Yenkees despise us Chermans. Ve cannot go to this city, to
+that dock. Everywhere is dead-lines and permissions and internment
+camps and persecutions, and all who are not in prison are afraid. They
+change their names from Cherman to English now, but soon they shall
+lift their heads and it shall be the Americans who shall know the
+dead-lines, the licenses, the internment camps.
+
+"So, Marie Louise, my sveetheart, if you can show and I can show that
+in the dark night ve did not forget the _Vaterland_, ve shall be proud
+and safe.
+
+"It is to make you safe ven comes _Der Tag_ I speak to you now. I vish
+you should share my vork now, so you can share my life efterwards.
+Now do I loaf you, Marie Louise? Now do I give you proof?"
+
+Mamise was all ashudder with the intensity of his conviction. She
+imagined an all-conquering Germany in America. She needed but to
+multiply the story of Belgium, of Serbia, of prostrate Russia. The
+Kaiser had put in the shop-window of the world samples enough of the
+future as it would be made by Germany.
+
+And in the mood of that day, with defeatism rife in Europe, and
+pessimism miasmatic in America, there was reason enough for Nicky to
+believe in his prophecy and to inspire belief in its possibility. The
+only impossible thing about it was that the world should ever endure
+the dominance of Germany. Death would seem better to almost everybody
+than life in such a civilization as she promised.
+
+Mamise feared the Teutonic might, but she could not for a moment
+consent to accept it. There was only one thing for her to do, and that
+was to learn what plans she could, and thwart them. Here within her
+grasp was the long-sought opportunity to pay off the debt she had
+incurred. She could be a soldier now, at last. There was no price that
+Nicky might have demanded too great, too costly, too shameful for her
+to pay. To denounce him or defy him would be a criminal waste of
+opportunity.
+
+She said: "I understand. You are right, of course. Let me help in any
+way I can. I only wish there were something big for me to do."
+
+Nicky was overjoyed. He had triumphed both as patriot and as lover.
+
+"There is a big think for you to do," he said. "You can all you
+vill."
+
+"Tell me," she pleaded.
+
+"You are in shipyard. This man Davidge goes on building ships. I gave
+him fair warning. I sinked one ship for him, but he makes more."
+
+"You sank his ship?" Mamise gasped.
+
+"Sure! The _Clara_, he called her. I find where she goes to take
+cargo. I go myself. I row up behind the ship in little boat, and I
+fasten by the rudder-post under the water, where no one sees, a bomb.
+It is all innocent till ship moves. Then every time the rudder turns a
+little screw turns in the machine.
+
+"It turns for two, three days; then--_boom_! It makes explosion, tears
+ship to pieces, and down she goes. And so goes all the next ships if
+you help again."
+
+"Again? What do you mean by again?"
+
+"It is you, Marie Louise, who sinks the _Clara_."
+
+Her laugh of incredulity was hardly more than a shiver of dread.
+
+"_Ja wohl!_ You did told Chake Nuttle vat Davidge tells you. Chake
+Nuttle tells me. I go and make sink the ship!"
+
+"Jake Nuddle! It was Jake that told you!" Mamise faltered, seeing her
+first vague suspicions damnably confirmed.
+
+"Sure! Chake Nuttle is my _Leutnant_. He has had much money. He gets
+more. He shall be rich man after comes _Der Tag_. It might be we make
+him von Nuttle! and you shall be Gräfin von Oesten."
+
+Mamise was in an abject terror. The thick trees of the park were
+spooky as the dim light of the car elicited from the black wall of
+dark faint details of tree-trunks and naked boughs stark with winter.
+She was in a hurry to learn the rest and be gone. She spoke with a
+poor imitation of pride:
+
+"So I have already done something more for Germany. That's splendid.
+Now tell me what else I can do, for I want to--to get busy right
+away."
+
+Nicky was too intoxicated with his success to see through her thin
+disguise.
+
+"You are close by Davidge. Chake Nuttle tells me he is sveet on you.
+You have his confidence. You can learn what secrets he has. Next time
+we do not vait for ship to be launched and to go for cargo. It might
+go some place ve could not find.
+
+"So now ve going blow up those ships before they touch vater--ve blow
+up his whole yard. You shall go beck and take up again your vork, and
+ven all is right I come down and get a job. I dress like vorkman and
+get into the yard. And I bring in enough bombs to blow up all the
+ships and the cranes and the machines.
+
+"Chake Nuttle tells me Davidge just gets a plate-bending machine.
+Forty-five t'ousand dollars it costs him, and long time to get. In one
+minute--poof! Ve bend that plate-bender!"
+
+He laughed a great Teutonic laugh and supposed that she was laughing,
+too. When he had subsided a little, he said:
+
+"So now you know vat you are to make! You like to do so much for
+Chermany, yes?"
+
+"Oh yes! Yes!" said Mamise.
+
+"You promise to do vat I send you vord?"
+
+"Yes." She would have promised to blow up the Capitol.
+
+"_Ach_, how beautiful you are even in the dark! Kiss me!"
+
+Remembering Judith, she paid that odious price, wishing that she might
+have the beast's infamous head with a sword. It was a kiss of
+betrayal, but she felt that it was no Judas-kiss, since Nicky was no
+Christ.
+
+He told her more of his plans in detail, and was so childishly proud
+of his superb achievements, past and future, that she could hardly
+persuade him to take her back to the station. He assured her that
+there was abundant time, but she would not trust his watch. She
+explained how necessary it was for her to return to Washington and to
+Polly Widdicombe's house before midnight. And at last he yielded to
+her entreaties, opened the door, and leaned out to tell the driver to
+turn back.
+
+Mamise was uneasy till they were out of the park and into the lighted
+streets again. But there was no safety here, for as they glided down
+Charles Street a taxicab going with the reckless velocity of taxicabs
+tried to cut across their path.
+
+There was a swift fencing for the right of way, and then the two cars
+came together with a clash and much crumpling of fenders.
+
+The drivers descended to wrangle over the blame, and Mamise had
+visions of a trip to the police station, with a consequent exposure.
+But Nicky was alive to the danger of notoriety. He got out and assumed
+the blame, taking the other driver's part and offering to pay the
+damages.
+
+The taxicab-driver assessed them liberally at fifty dollars, and Nicky
+filled his palm with bills, ordering his own driver to proceed. The
+car limped along with a twisted steering-gear, and Nicky growled
+thanksgivings over the narrow escape the German Empire had had from
+losing two of its most valuable agents.
+
+Mamise was sick with terror of what might have been. She saw the
+collision with a fatal result, herself and Nicky killed and flung to
+the street, dead together. It was not the fear of dying that froze
+her soul; it was the posthumous blow she would have given to Davidge's
+trust in her and all women, the pain she would have inflicted on his
+love. For to his dying day he would have believed her false to him, a
+cheap and nasty trickster, sneaking off to another town to a
+rendezvous with another man. And that man a German!
+
+The picture of his bitter disillusionment and of her own unmerited and
+eternal disgrace was intolerably real in spite of the fact that she
+knew it to be untrue, for our imaginations are far more ancient and
+more irresistible than our late and faltering reliance on the truth;
+the heavens and hells we fancy have more weight with our credulities
+than any facts we encounter. We can dodge the facts or close our eyes
+to them, but we cannot escape our dreams, whether our eyes are wide or
+sealed.
+
+Mamise could not free herself of this nightmare till she had bidden
+Nicky good-by the last time and left him in the cab outside the
+station.
+
+Further nightmares awaited her, for in the waiting-room she could not
+fight off the conviction that the train would never arrive. When it
+came clanging in on grinding wheels and she clambered aboard, she knew
+that it would be wrecked, and the finding of her body in the débris,
+or its disappearance in the flames, would break poor Davidge's heart
+and leave her to the same ignominy in his memory.
+
+While the train swung on toward Washington, she added another torment
+to her collection: how could she save Davidge from Nicky without
+betraying her sister's husband into the hands of justice? What right
+had she to tell Davidge anything when her sacred duty to her family
+and her poor sister must first be heartlessly violated?
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VII
+
+AT THE SHIPYARD
+
+[Illustration: Nobody recognized the lily-like beauty of Miss Webling in
+the smutty-faced passer-boy crouching at Sutton's elbow.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Mamise was astounded by the altered aspect of her own soul, for people
+can on occasion accomplish what the familiar Irish drillmaster invited
+his raw recruits to do--"Step out and take a look at yourselves."
+
+Also, like the old lady of the nursery rhymes whose skirts were cut
+off while she slept, Mamise regarded herself with incredulity and
+exclaimed:
+
+"Can this be I?"
+
+If she had had a little dog at home, it would have barked at her in
+unrecognition and convinced her that she was not herself.
+
+What astounded her was the realization that the problem of disregarding
+either her love or her duty was no longer a difficult problem. In
+London, when she had dimly suspected her benefactors, the Weblings,
+of betraying the trust that England put in them, she had abhorred
+the thought of mentioning her surmise to any one who might harm them.
+Later, at the shipyard, when she had suspected her sister's husband of
+disloyalty, she had put away the thought of action because it would
+involve her sister's ruin. But now, as she left Baltimore, convinced
+that her sister's husband was in a plot against her lover and her
+country, she felt hardly so much as a brake on her eagerness for the
+sacrifice of her family or herself. The horror had come to be a solemn
+duty so important as to be almost pleasant. She was glad to have
+something at last to give up for her nation.
+
+The thorough change in her desires was due to a complete change in
+her soul. She had gradually come to love the man whose prosperity was
+threatened by her sister's husband, and her vague patriotism had been
+stirred from dreams to delirium. Almost the whole world was
+undergoing such a war change. The altar of freedom so shining
+white had recently become an altar of sacrifice splashed with the
+blood of its votaries. Men were offering themselves, casting from
+them all the old privileges of freedom, the hopes of success in love
+and business, and submitting to discipline, to tyranny, to vile
+hardships. Wives and mothers were hurrying their men to the
+slaughter; those who had no men to give or men too weak for the
+trenches or unwilling to go were ashamed of themselves because they
+were missing from the beadroll of contributors.
+
+Mamise had become fanatic with the rest. She had wished to build
+ships, and had been refused more than a stenographer's share in the
+process. Next she had planned to go to the firing-line herself and
+offer what gift she had--the poor little gift of entertaining the
+soldiers with the vaudeville stunts she had lived down. And while she
+waited for a passport to join the army of women in France, she found
+at hand an opportunity to do a big deed, to thwart the enemy, to save
+ships and all the lives that ships alone could save. The price would
+be the liberty and what little good name her sister's husband had; it
+would mean protests and tears from her poor sister, whom life had
+dealt with harshly enough already.
+
+But Mamise counted the cost as nothing compared to what it would buy.
+She dared not laugh aloud in the crowded chair-car, but her inner
+being was shaken with joy. She had learned to love Davidge and to
+adore that strange, shapeless idea that she called her country.
+Instead of sacrificing her lover to her people, she could serve both
+by the same deed. She was wildly impatient for the moment when she
+could lay before Davidge the splendid information she had secured at
+the expense of a few negligible lies. If they should cost her a decade
+in purgatorial torments, she would feel that they were worth it.
+
+She reached Washington at a little after eleven and Grinden Hall
+before midnight. Now as she stood on the portico and looked across the
+river at the night-lit city, she felt such a pride as she had never
+known.
+
+She waved a salutation to the wraith of a town, her mind, if not her
+lips, voicing the words:
+
+"You owe me something, old capital. You'll never put up any statues to
+me or carve my name on any tablets, but I'm doing something for you
+that will mean more than anybody will ever realize."
+
+She turned and found the black maid gaping at her sleepily and
+wondering what invisible lover she was waving at. Mamise made no
+explanation, but went in, feeling a trifle foolish, but divinely so.
+
+Polly got out of bed and came all bundled up to Mamise's room to
+demand an accounting.
+
+"I was just on the point of telephoning the police to see if you had
+been found in the river."
+
+Mamise did not bother either to explain her past lies or tell any new
+ones. She majestically answered:
+
+"Polly darling, I have been engaged in affairs of state, which I am
+not at liberty to divulge to the common public."
+
+"Rot!" said Polly. "I believe the 'affairs,' but not the 'state.'"
+
+Mamise was above insult. "Some day you will know. You've heard of
+Helen of Troy, the lady with the face that launched a thousand
+ships? Well, this face of mine will launch at least half a dozen
+freight-boats."
+
+Polly yawned. "I'll call my doctor in the morning and have you taken
+away quietly. Your mind's wandering, as well as the rest of you."
+
+Mamise chuckled like a child with a great secret, and Polly waddled
+back to her bed.
+
+Next morning Mamise woke into a world warm with her own importance,
+though the thermometer was farther down than Washington's oldest
+records. She called Davidge on the long-distance telephone, and there
+was a zero in his voice that she had never heard before.
+
+"This is Mamise," she sang.
+
+"Yes?" Simply that and nothing more.
+
+She laughed aloud, glad that he cared enough for her to be so angry at
+her. She forgot the decencies of telephone etiquette enough to sing
+out:
+
+"Do you really love me so madly?"
+
+He loathed sentimentalities over the telephone, and she knew it, and
+was always indulging in them. But the fat was on the wire now, and he
+came back at her with a still icier tone:
+
+"There's only one good excuse for what you've done. Are you
+telephoning from a hospital?"
+
+"No, from Polly's."
+
+"Then I can't imagine any excuse."
+
+"But you're a business man, not an imaginator," she railed. "You
+evidently don't know me. I'm 'Belle Boyd, the Rebel Spy,' and also
+'Joan of Arkansas,' and a few other patriots. I've got news for you
+that will melt the icicles off your eyebrows."
+
+"News?" he answered, with no curiosity modifying his anger.
+
+"War news. May I come down and tell you about it?"
+
+"This is a free country."
+
+"Fine! You're simply adorable when you try to sulk. What time would be
+most convenient?"
+
+"I make no more appointments with you, young woman."
+
+"All right. Then I'll wait at my shanty till you come."
+
+"I was going to rent it."
+
+"You just dare! I am coming back to work. The strike is over."
+
+"You'd better come to the office as soon as you get here."
+
+"All right. Give my love to Miss Gabus."
+
+She left the telephone and set about packing her things in a fury.
+Polly reminded her that she had appointments for fittings at
+dressmakers'.
+
+"I never keep appointments," said Mamise. "You can cancel them for me
+till this cruel war is over. Have the bills sent to me at the
+shipyard, will you, dear? Sorry to bother you, but I've barely time to
+catch my train."
+
+Polly called her a once unmentionable name that was coming into
+fashionable use after a long exile. Women had draped themselves in a
+certain animal's pelt with such freedom and grace for so many years
+that its name had lost enough of its impropriety to be spoken, and not
+too much to express disapproval.
+
+"You skunk!" said Polly. And Mamise laughed. Everything made her laugh
+now; she was so happy that she began to cry.
+
+"Why the crocodiles?" said Polly. "Because you're leaving me?"
+
+"No, I'm crying because I didn't realize how unhappy I had always been
+before I am as happy as I am now. I'm going to be useful at last,
+Polly. I'm going to do something for my country."
+
+She was sharing in that vast national ecstasy which is called
+patriotism and which turns the flames of martyrdom into roses.
+
+When Mamise reached the end of her journey she found Davidge waiting
+for her at the railroad station with a limousine.
+
+His manner was studiously insulting, but he was helplessly glad to see
+her, and the humiliation he had suffered from her failure to keep her
+engagements with him in Washington was canceled by the tribute of her
+return to him. The knot of his frown was solved by the mischief of her
+smile. He had to say:
+
+"Why didn't you meet me at luncheon?"
+
+"How could I prevent the Potomac from putting the old bridge out of
+commission?" she demanded. "I got there in time, but they wouldn't let
+me across, and by the time I reached the hotel you had gone, and I
+didn't know where to find you. Heaven knows I tried."
+
+The simplicity of this explanation deprived him of every excuse for
+further wrath, and he was not inspired to ask any further questions.
+He was capable of nothing better than a large and stupid:
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Wait till you hear what I've got to tell you."
+
+But first he disclosed a little plot of his own with a comfortable
+guiltiness:
+
+"How would you like," he stammered, "since you say you have news--how
+would you like--instead of going to your shanty--I've had a fire built
+in it--but--how would you like to take a ride in the car--out into the
+country, you know? Then you could tell me, and nobody would hear or
+interrupt."
+
+She was startled by the similarity of his arrangement to that of Nicky
+Easton, but she approached it with different dread.
+
+She regretted the broad daylight and the disconcerting landscape. In
+the ride with Nicky she had been enveloped in the dark. Now the sky
+was lined with unbleached wool. The air was thick with snow withheld,
+and the snow on the ground took the color of the sky. But the light
+was searching, cynical, and the wayside scenes were revealed with the
+despondent starkness of a Russian novel. In this romanceless,
+colorless dreariness it was not easy for Mamise to gloss over the
+details of her meeting with Nicky Easton.
+
+There was no escaping this part of the explanation, however, and she
+could see how little comfort Davidge took from the news that she had
+gone so far to be alone with a former devotee. A man does not want his
+sweetheart to take risks for him beyond a certain point, and he would
+rather not be saved at all than be saved by her at too high a price.
+The modern man has a hard time living down the heritage from the
+ten-thousand-year habitude of treating his women like children who
+cannot be trusted to take care of themselves.
+
+Mamise had such poor success with the part of her chronicle she wished
+to publish that she boggled miserably the part she wanted to handle
+with most discretion. As is usual in such cases, the most conspicuous
+thing about her message was her inability to conceal the fact that she
+was concealing something. Davidge's imagination was consequently so
+busy that he paid hardly any attention to the tremendous facts she so
+awkwardly delivered.
+
+She might as well have told him flat that Nicky would not divulge his
+plot except with his arms about her and his lips at her cheeks. That
+would not have been easy telling, but it was all too easy imagining
+for Davidge. He was thrown into an utter wretchedness by the vision he
+had of her surrender to the opportunity and to the undoubted
+importunity of her companion. He had a morbid desire to make her
+confess, and confessors have a notorious appetite for details.
+
+"You weren't riding with Easton alone in the dark all that
+time--without--"
+
+She waited for the question as for a bludgeon. Davidge had some
+trouble in wielding it. He hated the thought so much that the words
+were unspeakable, and he hunted for some paraphrase. In the sparse
+thesaurus of his vocabulary he found nothing subtle. He groaned:
+
+"Without his--his making love to you?"
+
+"I wish you wouldn't ask me," said Mamise.
+
+"I don't need to. You've answered," Davidge snarled. "And so will
+he."
+
+Mamise's heart was suddenly a live coal, throbbing with fire and
+keenly painful--yet very warm. She had a man who loved her well enough
+to hate for her and to avenge her. That was something gained.
+
+Davidge brooded. It was inconceivably hideous that he should have
+given his heart to this pretty thing at his side only to have her
+ensconce herself in the arms of another man and give him the liberty
+of her cheeks--Heaven knew, hell knew, what other liberties. He vowed
+that he would never put his lips where another man's had been.
+
+Mamise seemed to feel soiled and fit only for the waste-basket of
+life. She had delivered her "message to Garcia," and Garcia rewarded
+her with disgust. She waited shame-fast for a moment before she could
+even falter:
+
+"Did you happen to hear the news I brought you? Or doesn't it interest
+you?"
+
+Davidge answered with repugnance:
+
+"Agh!"
+
+In her meekness she needed some insult to revive her, and this
+sufficed. She flared instantly:
+
+"I'm sorry I told you. I hope that Nicky blows up your whole damned
+shipyard and you with it; and I'd like to help him!"
+
+Nothing less insane could have served the brilliant effect of that
+outburst. It cleared the sultry air like a crackling thunderbolt. A
+gentle rain followed down her cheeks, while the overcharged heart of
+Davidge roared with Jovian laughter.
+
+There is no cure for these desperate situations like such an
+explosion. It burns up at once the litter of circumstance and leaves
+hardly an ash. It fuses elements that otherwise resist welding, and it
+annihilates all minor fears in one great terror that ends in a joyous
+relief.
+
+Mamise was having a noble cry now, and Davidge was sobbing with
+laughter--the two forms of recreation most congenial to their
+respective sexes.
+
+Davidge caught her hands and cooed with such noise that the driver
+outside must have heard the reverberations through the glass:
+
+"You blessed child! I'm a low-lived brute, and you're an angel."
+
+A man loves to call himself a brute, and a woman loves to be called an
+angel, especially when it is untrue in both cases.
+
+The sky of their being thus cleansed with rain and thunder, and all
+blue peace again, they were calm enough by and by to consider the main
+business of the session--what was to be done to save the shipyard from
+destruction?
+
+Mamise had to repeat most of what she had told, point by point:
+
+Nicky was not going to wait till the ships were launched or even
+finished. He was impatient to strike a resounding blow at the American
+program. Nicky was going to let Mamise know just when the blow was to
+be struck, so that she might share in the glory of it when triumphant
+Germany rewarded her faithful servants in America. Jake Nuddle was to
+take part in the ship-slaughter for the double privilege of protesting
+against this capitalistic war and of crippling those cruel capitalists
+to whom he owed all his poverty--to hear him tell it.
+
+When Mamise had finished this inventory of the situation Davidge
+pondered aloud:
+
+"Of course, we ought to turn the case over to the Department of
+Justice and the Military and Naval Intelligence to handle, but--"
+
+"But I'd like to shelter my poor sister if I could," said Mamise. "Of
+course, I wouldn't let any tenderness for Jake Nuddle stand in the way
+of my patriotic duty, for Heaven knows he's as much of a traitor to my
+poor sister as he is to everything else that's decent, but I'd like to
+keep him out of it somehow. Something might happen to make it
+possible, don't you suppose?"
+
+"I might cripple him and send him to a hospital to save his life,"
+said Davidge.
+
+"Anything to keep him out of it," said Mamise. "If I should tell the
+authorities, though, they'd put him in jail right away, wouldn't
+they?"
+
+"Probably. And they'd run your friend Nicky down and intern him. Then
+I'd lose my chance to lay hands on him as--"
+
+"As he did on you," was what he started to say, but he stopped in
+time.
+
+This being Davidge's fierce desire, he found plenty of justification
+for it in other arguments. In the first place, there was no telling
+where Nicky might be. He had given Mamise no hint of his headquarters.
+She had neglected to ask where she could reach him, and had been
+instructed simply to wait till he gave her the signal. No doubt he
+could be picked up somewhere in the enormous, ubiquitous net with
+which America had been gradually covered by the secret services and by
+the far-flung line of the American Protective League made up of
+private citizens. But there would be a certain unsatisfactoriness
+about nipping his plot so far from even the bud. Prevention is wisdom,
+but it lacks fascination.
+
+And supposing that they found Nicky, what evidence had they against
+him, except Mamise's uncorroborated statement that he had discussed
+certain plots with her? Enemy aliens could be interned without trial,
+but that meant a halcyon existence for Nicky and every comfort except
+liberty. This was not to be considered. Davidge had a personal grudge,
+too, to satisfy. He owed Nicky punishment for sinking the ship named
+after Davidge's mother and for planning to sink the ship he was naming
+after the woman he hoped to make his wife.
+
+Davidge was eager to seize Nicky in the very act of planting his
+torpedo and hoist him with his own petard. So he counseled a plan of
+waiting further developments. Mamise was the more willing, since it
+deferred the hateful moment when Jake Nuddle would be exposed. She had
+a hope that things might so happen as to leave him out of the
+dénouement entirely.
+
+And now Davidge and Mamise were in perfect agreement, conspirators
+against a conspiracy. And there was the final note of the terrible in
+their compact: their failure meant the demolition of all those growing
+ships, the nullification of Davidge's entire contribution to the war;
+their success would mean perhaps the death of Easton and the
+blackening of the name of Mamise's sister and her sister's children.
+
+The solemnity of the outlook made impossible any talk of love. Davidge
+left Mamise at her cottage and rode back to his office, feeling like
+the commander of a stockade in the time of an Indian uprising. Mamise
+found that his foresight had had the house warmed for her; and there
+were flowers in a jar. She smiled at his tenderness even in his wrath.
+But the sight of the smoke rolling from the chimney had caught the eye
+of her sister, and she found Abbie waiting to welcome her.
+
+The two rushed to each other with the affection of blood-kin, but
+Mamise felt like a Judas when she kissed the sister she was planning
+to betray. Abbie began at once to recite a catalogue of troubles. They
+were sordid and petty, but Mamise shivered to think how real a tragedy
+impended. She wondered how right she was to devastate her sister's
+life for the sake of a cause which, after all, was only the imagined
+welfare of millions of total strangers. She could not see the nation
+for the people, but her sister was her sister, and pitifully human.
+That was the worst wrench of war, the incessant compulsions to tear
+the heart away from its natural moorings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Davidge thought it only fair to take the Department of Justice
+operative, Larrey, into his confidence. Larrey was perfectly willing
+to defer reporting to his office chief until the more dramatic
+conclusion; for he had an easily understandable ambition to share in
+the glory of it. It was agreed that a closer watch than ever should be
+kept on the shipyard and its approaches. Easton had promised to notify
+Mamise of his arrival, but he might grow suspicious of her and strike
+without warning.
+
+The period of waiting was as maddening as the suspense of the poor
+insomniac who implored the man next door to "drop the other shoe."
+Mamise suffered doubly from her dual interest in Abbie and in Davidge.
+She dared not tell Abbie what was in the wind, though she tried to
+undermine gradually the curious devotion Abbie bore to her worthless
+husband. But Mamise's criticisms of Jake only spurred Abbie to new
+defenses of him and a more loyal affection.
+
+Day followed day, and Mamise found the routine of the office
+intolerably monotonous. Time gnawed at her resolution, and she began
+to hope to be away when Easton made his attempt. It occurred to her
+that it would be pleasant to have an ocean between her and the crisis.
+She said to Davidge:
+
+"I wish Nicky would come soon, for I have applied for a passport to
+France. Major Widdicombe got me the forms to fill out, and he promised
+to expedite them. I ought to go the minute they come."
+
+This information threw Davidge into a complex dismay. Here was another
+of Mamise's long-kept secrets. The success of her plan meant the loss
+of her, or her indefinite postponement. It meant more yet. He
+groaned.
+
+"Good Lord! everybody in the United States is going to France except
+me. Even the women are all emigrating. I think I'll just turn the
+shipyard over to the other officers of the corporation and go with
+you. Let Easton blow it up then, if he wants to, so long as I get into
+the uniform and into the fighting."
+
+This new commotion was ended by a shocking and unforeseen occurrence.
+The State Department refused to grant Mamise a passport, and dazed
+Widdicombe by letting him know confidentially that Mamise was on the
+red list of suspects because of her Germanized past. This was news to
+Widdicombe, and he went to Polly in a state of bewilderment.
+
+Polly had never told him what Mamise had told her, but she had to let
+out a few of the skeletons in Mamise's closet now. Widdicombe felt
+compromised in his own loyalty, but Polly browbeat him into
+submission. She wrote to Mamise and broke the news to her as gently as
+she could, but the rebuff was cruel. Mamise took her sorrow to
+Davidge.
+
+He was furious and proposed to "go to the mat" with the State
+Department. Mamise, however, shook her head; she saw that her only
+hope of rehabilitation lay in a positive proof of her fidelity.
+
+"I got my name stained in England because I didn't have the pluck to
+do something positive. I was irresolution personified, and I'm paying
+for it. But for once in my life I learned a lesson, and when I learned
+what Nicky planned I ran right to you with it. Now if we catch Nicky
+red-handed, and I turn over my own brother-in-law to justice, that
+ought to redeem me, oughtn't it?"
+
+Davidge had a better idea for her protection. "Marry me, and then they
+can't say anything."
+
+"Then they'll suspect you," she said. "Too many good Americans have
+been dragged into hot water by pro-German wives, and I'm not going to
+marry you till I can bring you some other dower than a spotted
+reputation."
+
+"I'd take you and be glad to get you if you were as polka-dotted as a
+leopardess," said Davidge.
+
+"Just as much obliged; but no, thank you," said Mamise. "Furthermore,
+if we were married, the news would reach Nicky Easton through Jake
+Nuddle, and then Nicky would lose all trust in me, and come down on us
+without warning."
+
+"This makes about the fifteenth rejection I've had," said Davidge.
+"And I'd sworn never to ask you again."
+
+"I promised to ask you when the time was ripe," said Mamise.
+
+"Don't forget. Barkis is always willin' and waitin'."
+
+"While we're both waiting," Mamise went on, "there's one thing you've
+got to do for me, or I'll never propose to you."
+
+"Granted, to the half my shipyard."
+
+"It's only a job in your shipyard. I can't stand this typewriter-tapping
+any longer. I'm going mad. I want to swing a hammer or something. You
+told me that women could build a whole ship if they wanted to, and I
+want to build my part of one."
+
+"But--"
+
+"If you speak of my hands, I'll prove to you how strong they are.
+Besides, if I were out in the yard at work, I could keep a better
+watch for Nicky, and I could keep you better informed as to the
+troubles always brewing among the workmen."
+
+"But--"
+
+"I'm strong enough for it, too. I've been taking a lot of exercise
+recently to get in trim. If you don't believe me, feel that muscle."
+
+She flexed her biceps, and he took hold of it timidly in its silken
+sleeve. It amazed him, for it was like marble. Still, he hated to lose
+her from the neighborliness of the office; he hated to send her out
+among the workmen with their rough language and their undoubted
+readiness to haze her and teach her her place. But she was stubborn
+and he saw that her threat was in earnest when she said:
+
+"If you don't give me a job, I'll go to some other company."
+
+Then he yielded and wrote her a note to the superintendent of the
+yard, and said:
+
+"You can begin to-morrow."
+
+She smiled in her triumph and made the very womanly comment: "But I
+haven't a thing to wear. Do you know a good ladies' tailor who can fit
+me out with overalls, some one who has been 'Breeches-maker to the
+Queen' and can drape a baby-blue denim pant modishly?"
+
+The upshot of it was that she decided to make her own trousseau, and
+she went shopping for materials and patterns. She ended by visiting an
+emporium for "gents' furnishings." The storekeeper asked her what
+size her husband wore, and she said:
+
+"Just about my own."
+
+He gave her the smallest suit in stock, and she held it up against
+her. It was much too brief, and she was heartened to know that there
+were workmen littler than she.
+
+She bought the garment that came nearest to her own dimensions, and
+hurried home with it joyously. It proved to be a perfect misfit, and
+she worked over it as if it were a coming-out gown; and indeed it was
+her costume for her début into the world of manual labor.
+
+Abbie dropped in and surprised her in her attitudes and was handsomely
+scandalized:
+
+"When's the masquerade?" she asked.
+
+Mamise told her of her new career.
+
+Abbie was appalled. "It's against the Bible for a woman to wear a
+man's things!" she protested. Abbie could quote the Scripture for
+every discouraging purpose.
+
+"I'd rather wear them than wash them," said Mamise; "and if you'll
+take my advice you'll get a suit of overalls yourself and earn an
+honest living and five times as much money as Jake would give you--if
+he ever gave you any."
+
+But Abbie wailed that Mamise had gone indecent as well as crazy, and
+trembled at the thought of what the gossips along the row would do
+with the family reputation. The worst of it was that Mamise had money
+in the bank and did not have to work.
+
+That was the incomprehensible thing to Jake Nuddle. He accepted the
+familiar theory that all capital is stolen goods, and he reproached
+Mamise with the double theft of poor folks' money and now of poor
+folks' work. Mamise's contention that there were not enough workmen
+for the country's needs fell on deaf ears, for Jake believed that work
+was a crime against the sacred cause of the laboring-man. His ideal of
+a laboring-man was one who seized the capital from the capitalists and
+then ceased to labor.
+
+But Jake's too familiar eyes showed that he regarded Mamise as a very
+interesting spectacle. The rest of the workmen seemed to have the same
+opinion when she went to the yard in her overalls next morning. She
+was the first woman to take up man's work in the neighborhood, and she
+had to endure the most searching stares, grins, frowns, and comments
+that were meant to be overheard.
+
+She struck all the men as immodest; some were offended and some were
+delighted. As usual, modesty was but another name for conformity.
+Mamise had to face the glares of the conventional wives and daughters
+in their bodices that followed every contour, their light skirts that
+blew above the knees, and their provocative hats and ribbons. They
+made it plain to her that they were outraged by this shapeless
+passer-by in the bifurcated potato-sack, with her hair tucked up under
+a vizored cap and her hands in coarse mittens.
+
+Mamise had studied the styles affected by the workmen as if they were
+fashion-plates from Paris, and she had equipped herself with a slouchy
+cap, heavy brogans, a thick sweater, a woolen shirt, and thick
+flannels underneath.
+
+She was as well concealed as she could manage, and yet her femininity
+seemed to be emphasized by her very disguise. The roundness of bosom
+and hip and the fineness of shoulder differed too much from the
+masculine outline to be hidden. And somehow there was more coquetry in
+her careful carelessness than in all the exaggerated womanishness of
+the shanty belles. She had been a source of constant wonder to the
+community from the first. But now she was regarded as a downright
+menace to the peace and the morals of society.
+
+Mamise reported to the superintendent and gave him Davidge's card. The
+old man respected Davidge's written orders and remembered the private
+instructions Davidge had given him to protect Mamise from annoyance at
+all costs. The superintendent treated her as if she were a child
+playing at salesmanship in a store. And this was the attitude of all
+the men except a few incorrigible gallants, who tried to start
+flirtations and make movie dates with her.
+
+Sutton, the master riveter, alone received her with just the right
+hospitality. He had no fear that she would steal his job or his glory
+or that any man would. He had talked with her often and let her
+practise at his riveting-gun. He had explained that her ambition to be
+a riveter was hopeless, since it would take at least three month's
+apprenticeship before she could hope to begin on such a career. But
+her sincere longings to be a builder and not a loafer won his
+respect.
+
+When she expressed a shy wish to belong to his riveting-gang he said:
+
+"Right you are, miss--or should I say mister?"
+
+"I'd be proud if you'd call me bo," said Mamise.
+
+"Right you are, bo. We'll start you in as a passer-boy. I'll be glad
+to get rid of that sleep-walker. Hay, Snotty!" he called to a grimy
+lad with an old bucket. The youth rubbed the back of his greasy glove
+across the snub of nose that had won him his name, and, shifting his
+precocious quid, growled:
+
+"Ah, what!"
+
+"Ah, go git your time--or change to another gang. Tell the supe. I'm
+not fast enough for you. Go on--beat it!"
+
+Mamise saw that she already had an enemy. She protested against
+displacing another toiler, but Sutton told her that there were jobs
+enough for the cub.
+
+He explained the nature of Mamise's duties, talking out of one side of
+his mouth and using the other for ejaculations of an apparently
+inexhaustible supply of tobacco-juice. Seeing that Mamise's startled
+eyes kept following these missiles, he laughed:
+
+"Do you use chewin'?"
+
+"I don't think so," said Mamise, not quite sure of his meaning.
+
+"Well, you'll have to keep a wad of gum goin', then, for you cert'n'y
+need a lot of spit in this business."
+
+Mamise found this true enough, and the next time Davidge saw her she
+kept her grinders milling and used the back of her glove with a
+professional air. For the present, however, she had no brain-cells to
+spare for mastication. Sutton introduced her to his crew.
+
+"This gink here with the whiskers is Zupnik; he's the holder-on; he
+handles the dolly and hangs on to the rivets while I swat 'em. The
+pill over by the furnace is the heater; his name is Pafflow, and his
+job is warming up the rivets. Just before they begin to sizzle he
+yanks 'em out with the tongs and throws 'em to you. You ketch 'em in
+the bucket--I hope, and take 'em out with your tongs and put 'em in
+the rivet-hole, and then Zupnik and me we do the rest. And what do we
+call you? Miss Webling is no name for a workin'-man."
+
+"My name is Marie Louise."
+
+"Moll is enough."
+
+And Moll she was thenceforth.
+
+The understanding of Mamise's task was easier than its performance.
+Pafflow sent the rivets to her fast and fleet, and they were red-hot.
+The first one passed her and struck Sutton. His language blistered.
+The second sizzled against her hip. The third landed in the pail with
+a pleasant clink, but she was so slow in getting her tongs about it,
+and fitting it into its place, that it was too cold for use. This
+threw her into a state of hopelessness. She was ready to resign.
+
+"I think I'd better go back to crocheting," she sighed.
+
+Sutton gave her a playful shove that almost sent her off the
+platform:
+
+"Nah, you don't, Moll. You made me chase Snotty off the job, and
+you're goin' t'rough wit' it. You ain't doin' no worse 'n I done
+meself when I started rivetin'. Cheese! but I spoiled so much work I
+got me tail kicked offen me a dozen times!"
+
+This was politer language than some that he used. His conversation was
+interspersed with words that no one prints. They scorched Mamise's
+ears like red-hot rivets at first, but she learned to accept them as
+mere emphasis. And, after all, blunt Anglo-Saxon never did any harm
+that Latin paraphrase could prevent.
+
+The main thing was Sutton's rough kindliness, his splendid efficiency,
+and his infinite capacity for taking pains with each rivet-head,
+hammering it home, then taking up his pneumatic chipping-tool to trim
+it neat. That is the genius and the glory of the artisan, to perfect
+each detail _ad unguem_, like a poet truing up a sonnet.
+
+Sutton was putting in thousands on thousands of rivets a month, and
+every one of them was as important to him as every other. He feared
+the thin knife-blade of the rivet-tester as the scrupulous writer
+dreads the learned critic's scalpel.
+
+Mamise was dazed to learn that the ship named after her would need
+nearly half a million rivets, each one of them necessary to the
+craft's success. The thought of the toil, the noise, the sweat,
+the money involved made the work a sort of temple-building, and
+the thought of Nicky Easton's ability to annul all that devout
+accomplishment in an instant nauseated her like a blasphemy. She
+felt herself a priestess in a holy office and renewed her flagging
+spirits with prayers for strength and consecration.
+
+But few of the laborers had Sutton's pride or Mamise's piety in the
+work. Just as she began to get the knack of catching and placing the
+rivets Pafflow began to register his protest against her sex. He took
+a low joy in pitching rivets wild, and grinned at her dancing lunges
+after them.
+
+Mamise would not tattle, but she began again to lose heart. Sutton's
+restless appetite for rivets noted the new delay, and he grasped the
+cause of it at once. His first comment was to walk over to the furnace
+and smash Pafflow in the nose.
+
+"You try any of that I. W. W. sabotodge here, you----, and I'll stuff
+you in a rivet-hole and turn the gun loose on you."
+
+Pafflow yielded first to force and later to the irresistible power of
+Mamise's humility. Indeed, her ardor for service warmed his
+indifferent soul at last, and he joined with her to make a brilliant
+team, hurtling the rivets in red arcs from the coke to the pail with
+the precision of a professional baseball battery.
+
+Mamise eventually acquired a womanly deftness in plucking up the rivet
+and setting it in place, and Davidge might have seen grounds for
+uneasiness in her eager submissiveness to Sutton as she knelt before
+him, watched his eye timidly, and glowed like coke under the least
+breath of his approval.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Sutton was a mighty man in his way, and earning a wage that would have
+been accounted princely a year before. All the workers were receiving
+immense increase of pay, but the champion riveters were lavishly
+rewarded.
+
+The whole shipyard industry was on a racing basis. Plans were being
+laid to celebrate the next Fourth of July with an unheard-of number of
+launchings. Every boat-building company was trying to put overboard an
+absolute maximum of hulls on that day.
+
+"Hurry-up" Hurley, who had driven the first rivets into a steel ship
+pneumatically, and Charles M. Schwab, of Bethlehem, were the inspiring
+leaders in the rush, and their ambition was to multiply the national
+output by ten. The spirit of emulation thrilled all the thrillable
+workmen, but the riveters were the spectacular favorites. Their names
+appeared in the papers as they topped each other's scores, and Sutton
+kept outdoing himself. For special occasions he groomed himself like a
+race-horse, resting the day before the great event and then giving
+himself up to a frenzy of speed.
+
+On one noble day of nine hours' fury he broke the world's record
+temporarily. He drove four thousand eight hundred and seventy-five
+three-quarter-inch rivets into place. Then he was carried away to a
+twenty-four-hour rest, like an exhausted prizefighter.
+
+That was one of the great days in Mamise's history, for she was
+permitted to assist in the achievement, and she was not entirely
+grateful to Davidge for suppressing the publication of her name
+alongside Sutton's. Her photograph appeared with his in many of the
+supplements, but nobody recognized the lily-like beauty of Miss
+Webling in the smutty-faced passer-boy crouching at Sutton's elbow.
+The publication of her photograph as an English belle had made
+history for her, in that it brought Jake Nuddle into her life; but
+this picture had no follow-up except in her own pride.
+
+This rapture, however, long postdated her first adventure into the
+shipyard. That grim period of eight hours was an alternation of shame,
+awkwardness, stupidity, failure, fatigue, and despair.
+
+She did not even wash up for lunch, but picked her fodder from her
+pail with her companions. She smoked a convivial cigarette with the
+gang and was proud as a boy among grown-ups. She even wanted to be
+tough and was tempted to use ugly words in a swaggering pride.
+
+But after her lunch it was almost impossible for her to get up and go
+back to her task, and she would have fainted from sheer weariness
+except that she had forsworn such luxuries as swoons.
+
+The final whistle found her one entire neuralgia. The unending use of
+the same muscles, the repetition of the same rhythmic series, the
+cranium-shattering clatter of all the riveting-guns, the anxiety to be
+sure of each successive rivet, quite burned her out. And she learned
+that the reward for this ordeal was, according to the minimum
+wage-scale adopted by the Emergency Fleet Corporation, thirty cents an
+hour for eight hours, with a ten-per-cent. increase for a six-day
+week. This would amount to all of two dollars and sixty-four cents for
+the day, and fifteen dollars for the week!
+
+It was munificent for a passer-boy, but it was ruinous for a young
+woman of independent fortune and an ambition to look her best. She
+gasped with horror when she realized the petty reward for such
+prolonged torment. She was too weary to contrast the wage with the
+prices of food, fuel, and clothing. While wages climbed expenses
+soared.
+
+She understood as never before, and never after, why labor is
+discontent and why it is so easily stirred to rebellion, why it feels
+itself the exploited slave of imaginary tyrants. She went to bed at
+eight and slept in the deeps of sweat-earned repose.
+
+The next morning, getting up was like scourging a crowd of fagged-out
+children to school. All her limbs and sundry muscles whose existence
+she had never realized before were like separate children, each aching
+and wailing: "I can't! I won't!"
+
+But the lameness vanished when she was at work again, and her sinews
+began to learn their various trades and to manage them automatically.
+She grew strong and lusty, and her task grew easy. She began to
+understand that while the employee has troubles enough and to spare,
+he has none of the torments of leadership; he is not responsible for
+the securing of contracts and materials, for borrowings of capital
+from the banks, or for the weekly nightmare of meeting the pay-roll.
+There are two hells in the cosmos of manufacture: the dark pit where
+the laborer fights the tiny worms of expense and the dizzy crags where
+the employer battles with the dragons of aggregates.
+
+Mamise saw that most of the employees were employees because they
+lacked the self-starter of ambition. They were lazy-minded, and even
+their toiling bodies were lazy. For all their appearance of effort
+they did not ordinarily attain an efficiency of thirty per cent. of
+their capabilities. The turnover in employment was three times what it
+should have been. Three hundred men were hired for every hundred
+steadily at work, and the men at work did only a third of the work
+they could have done. The total wastefulness of man rivaled the
+ghastly wastefulness of nature with spawn and energy.
+
+The poor toilers were more reckless, more shiftless, relatively more
+dissipated, than the idle rich, for the rich ordinarily squandered
+only the interest on their holdings, while the laborer wasted his
+capital in neglecting to make full use of his muscle. The risks they
+took with life and limb were amazing.
+
+On Saturdays great numbers quit work and waited for their pay. On
+Mondays the force was greatly reduced by absentees nursing the
+hang-over from the Sunday drunk, and of those that came to work so
+many were unfit that the Monday accident increase was proverbial.
+
+The excuse of slavery or serfdom was no longer legitimate, though it
+was loudly proclaimed by the agitators, the trade-union editors, and
+the parlor reformers. For, say what they would, labor could resign or
+strike at will; the laborer had his vote and his equality of
+opportunity. He was free even from the ordinary obligations, for
+nobody expected the workman to make or keep a contract for his
+services after it became inconvenient to him.
+
+There were bad sports among them, as among the rich and the classes
+between. There were unions and individuals that were tyrants in power
+and cry-babies in trouble. There was much cruelty, trickery, and
+despotism inside the unions--ferocious jealousy of union against
+union, and mutual destructiveness.
+
+This was, of course, inevitable, and it only proved that lying,
+cheating, and bullying were as natural to the so-called "laborer" as
+to the so-called "capitalist." The folly is in making the familiar
+distinction between them. Mamise saw that the majority of manual
+laborers did not do a third of the work they might have done and she
+knew that many of the capitalists did three times as much as they had
+to.
+
+It is the individual that tells the story, and Mamise, who had known
+hard-working, firm-muscled men, and devoted mothers and pure daughters
+among the rich, found them also among the poor, but intermingled here,
+as above, with sots, degenerates, child-beaters, and wantons.
+
+Mamise learned to admire and to be fond of many of the men and their
+families. But she had adventures with blackguards, rakes, and brutes.
+She was lovingly entreated by many a dear woman, but she was snubbed
+and slandered by others who were as extravagant, indolent, and immoral
+as the wives and daughters of the rich.
+
+But all in all, the ship-builders loafed horribly in spite of the
+poetic inspiration of their calling and the prestige of public
+laudation; in spite of the appeals for hulls to carry food to the
+starving and troops to the anxious battle-front of Europe. In spite
+also of the highest wages ever paid to a craft, they kept their
+efficiency at a lower point than lower paid workmen averaged in the
+listless pre-war days. Yet there was no lack of outcry that the
+workman was throttled and enslaved by the greed of capital. There was
+no lack of outcry that profiteers were bleeding the nation to death
+and making martyrs of the poor.
+
+Most of the capitalists had been workmen themselves and had risen from
+the lethargic mass by the simple expedient of using their brains for
+schemes and making their muscles produce more than the average output.
+The laborers who failed failed because when they got their eight-hour
+day they did not turn their leisure to production. And some of them
+dared to claim that the manual toilers alone produced the wealth and
+should alone be permitted to enjoy it, as if it were possible or
+desirable to choke off initiative and adventure or to devise a society
+in which the man whose ambition is to avoid work will set the pace for
+the man who loves it for itself and whose discontent goads him on to
+self-improvement! As if it were possible or desirable for the man who
+works half-heartedly eight hours a day to keep down the man who works
+whole-souledly eighteen hours a day! For time is power.
+
+Even the benefits the modern laborer enjoys are largely the result of
+intervention in his behalf by successful men of enterprise who thrust
+upon the toiler the comforts, the safeguards, and the very privileges
+he will not or cannot seek for himself.
+
+During the war the employers of labor, the generals of these
+tremendous armies, were everlastingly alert to find some means to
+stimulate them to do themselves justice. The best artists of the
+country devised eloquent posters, and these were stuck up everywhere,
+reminding the laborer that he was the partner of the soldier. Orators
+visited the yards and harangued the men. After each appeal there was a
+brief spurt of enthusiasm that showed what miracles could be
+accomplished if they had not lapsed almost at once into the usual
+sullen drudgery.
+
+There were appeals to thrift also. The government needed billions of
+dollars, needed them so badly that the pennies of the poorest man must
+be sought for. Few of the workmen had the faintest idea of saving. The
+wives of some of them were humbly provident, but many of them were
+debt-runners in the shops and wasters in the kitchens.
+
+A gigantic effort was put forth to teach the American people thrift.
+The idea of making small investments in government securities was
+something new. Bonds were supposed to be for bankers and plutocrats.
+Vast campaigns of education were undertaken, and the rich implored the
+poor to lay aside something for a rainy day. The rich invented schemes
+to wheedle the poor to their own salvation. So huge had been the
+wastefulness before that the new fashion produced billions upon
+billions of investments in Liberty Bonds, and hundreds of millions in
+War Savings Stamps.
+
+Bands of missionaries went everywhere, to the theaters, the
+moving-picture houses, the schools, the shops, the factories,
+preaching the new gospel of good business and putting it across in the
+name of patriotism.
+
+One of these troupes of crusaders marched upon Davidge's shipyard. And
+with it came Nicky Easton at last.
+
+Easton had deferred his advent so long that Mamise and Davidge had
+come almost to yearn for him with heartsick eagerness. The first
+inkling of the prodigal's approach was a visit that Jake Nuddle paid
+to Mamise late one evening. She had never broached to him the matter
+of her talk with Easton, waiting always for him to speak of it to her.
+She was amazed to see him now, and he brought amazement with him.
+
+"I just got a call on long distance," he said, "and a certain party
+tells me you was one of us all this time. Why didn't you put a feller
+wise?"
+
+Mamise was inspired to answer his reproach with a better: "Because I
+don't trust you, Jake. You talk too much."
+
+This robbed Jake of his bluster and convinced him that the elusive
+Mamise was some tremendous super-spy. He became servile at once, and
+took pride in being the lackey of her unexplained and unexplaining
+majesty. Mamise liked him even less in this rôle than the other.
+
+She took his information with a languid indifference, as if the
+terrifying news were simply a tiresome confirmation of what she had
+long expected. Jake was tremulous with excitement and approval.
+
+"Well, well, who'd 'a' thought our little Mamise was one of them
+slouch-hounds you read about? I see now why you've been stringin' that
+Davidge boob along. You got him eatin' out your hand. And I see now
+why you put them jumpers on and went out into the yards. You just got
+to know everything, ain't you?"
+
+Mamise nodded and smiled felinely, as she imagined a queen of mystery
+would do. But as soon as she could get rid of Jake she was like a
+child alone in a graveyard.
+
+Jake had told her that Nicky would be down in a few days, and not to
+be surprised when he appeared. She wanted to get the news to Davidge,
+but she dared not go to his rooms so late. And in the morning she was
+due at her job of passing rivets. She crept into bed to rest her
+dog-tired bones against the morrow's problems. Her dreams were all of
+death and destruction, and of steel ships crumpled like balls of
+paper thrown into a waste-basket.
+
+If she had but known it, Davidge was making the rounds of his
+sentry-line. The guard at one gate was sound asleep. He found two
+others playing cards, and a fourth man dead drunk.
+
+Inside the yards the great hulls rose up to the moon like the
+buttresses of a cliff. Only, they were delicately vulnerable, and
+Europe waited for them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+True sleep came to Mamise so late that her alarm-clock could hardly
+awaken her. It took all her speed to get her to her post. She dared
+not keep Sutton waiting, and fear of the time-clock had become a habit
+with her. As she caught the gleaming rivets and thrust them into their
+sconces, she wondered if all this toil were merely a waste of effort
+to give the sarcastic gods another laugh at human folly.
+
+She wanted to find Davidge and took at last the desperate expedient of
+pretended sickness. The passer-boy Snotty was found to replace her,
+and she hurried to Davidge's office.
+
+Miss Gabus stared at her and laughed. "Tired of your rivetin' a'ready?
+Come to get your old job back?"
+
+Mamise shook her head and asked for Davidge. He was out--no, not out
+of town, but out in the yard or the shop or up in the mold-loft or
+somewheres, she reckoned.
+
+Mamise set out to find him, and on the theory that among places to
+look for anything or anybody the last should be first she climbed the
+long, long stairs to the mold-loft.
+
+He was not among the acolytes kneeling at the templates; nor was he in
+the cathedral of the shop. She sought him among the ships, and came
+upon him at last talking to Jake Nuddle, of all people!
+
+Nuddle saw Mamise first and winked, implying that he also was making a
+fool of Davidge. Davidge looked sheepish, as he always did when he was
+caught in a benevolent act.
+
+"I was just talking to your brother-in-law, Miss Webling," he said,
+"trying to drive a few rivets into that loose skull. I don't want to
+fire him, on your account, but I don't see why I should pay an I. W.
+W. or a Bolshevist to poison my men."
+
+Davidge had been alarmed by the indifference of his sentinels. He
+thought it imbecile to employ men like Nuddle to corrupt the men
+within, while the guards admitted any wanderer from without. He was
+making a last attempt to convert Nuddle to industry for Mamise's sake,
+trying to pluck this dingy brand from the burning.
+
+"I was just showing Nuddle a little bookkeeping in patriotism," he
+said. "The Liberty Loan people are coming here, and I want the yard to
+do itself proud. Some of the men and women are going without
+necessities to help the government, while Nuddle and some others are
+working for the Kaiser. This is the record of Nuddle and his crew:
+
+"'Wages, six to ten dollars a day guaranteed by the government.
+Investment in Liberty Bonds, nothing; purchases of War Savings Stamps,
+nothing; contributions to Red Cross, Y. M. C. A., K. of C., J. W. B.,
+Salvation Army, nothing; contributions to relief funds of the Allies,
+nothing. Time spent at drill, none; time spent in helping recruiting,
+none. A clean sheet, and a sheet full of time spent in interfering
+with other men's work, sneering at patriotism, saying the Kaiser is no
+worse than the Allies, pretending that this is a war to please the
+capitalists, and that a soldier is a fool.'
+
+"In other words, Nuddle, you are doing the Germans' business, and I
+don't intend to pay you American money any longer unless you do more
+work with your hands and less with your jaw."
+
+Nuddle was stupid enough to swagger.
+
+"Just as you say, Davidge. You'll change your tune before long,
+because us workin'-men, bein' the perdoocers, are goin' to take over
+all these plants and run 'em to soot ourselves."
+
+"Fine!" said Davidge. "And will you take over my loans at the banks to
+meet the pay-rolls?"
+
+"We'll take over the banks!" said Jake, majestically. "We'll take over
+everything and let the workin'-men git their doos at last."
+
+"What becomes of us wicked plutocrats?"
+
+"We'll have you workin' for us."
+
+"Then we'll be the workin'-men, and it will be our turn to take over
+things and set you plutocrats to workin' for us, I suppose. And we'll
+be just where we are now."
+
+This was growing too seesawy for Nuddle, and he turned surly.
+
+"Some of you won't be in no shape to take over nothin'."
+
+Davidge laughed. "It's as bad as that, eh? Well, while I can, I'll
+just take over your button."
+
+"You mean I'm fired?"
+
+"Exactly," said Davidge, holding out his hand for the badge that
+served as a pass to the yards and the pay-roll. "Come with me, and
+you'll get what money's coming to you."
+
+This struck through Nuddle's thick wits. He cast a glance of dismay at
+Mamise. If he were discharged, he could not help Easton with the grand
+blow-up. He whined:
+
+"Ain't you no regard for a family man? I got a wife and kids dependent
+on me."
+
+"Well, do what Karl Marx did--let them starve or live on their own
+money while you prove that capital is as he said, 'a vampire of dead
+labor sucking the life out of living labor.' Or feed them on the wind
+you try to sell me."
+
+"Aw, have a heart! I talk too much, but I'm all right," Jake pleaded.
+
+Davidge relented a little. "If you'll promise to give your mouth a
+holiday and your hands a little work I'll keep you to the end of the
+month. And then, on your way!"
+
+"All right, boss; much obliged," said Jake, so relieved at his respite
+that he bustled away as if victorious, winking shrewdly at Mamise--who
+winked back, with some difficulty.
+
+She waited till he was a short distance off, then she murmured,
+quickly:
+
+"Don't jump--but Nicky Easton is coming here in the next few days; I
+don't know just when. He told Jake; Jake told me. What shall we do?"
+
+Davidge took the blow with a smile:
+
+"Our little guest is coming at last, eh? He promised to see you first.
+I'll have Larrey keep close to you, and the first move he makes we'll
+jump him. In the mean while I'll put some new guards on the job
+and--well, that's about all we can do but wait."
+
+"I mustn't be seen speaking to you too friendly. Jake thinks I'm
+fooling you."
+
+"God help me, if you are, for I love you. And I want you to be
+careful. Don't run any risks. I'd rather have the whole shipyard
+smashed than your little finger."
+
+"Thanks, but if I could swap my life for one ship it would be the best
+bargain I ever bought. Good-by."
+
+As she ran back to her post Davidge smiled at the womanishness of her
+gait, and thought of Joan of Arc, never so lovably feminine as in her
+armor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Days of harrowing restiveness followed, Mamise starting at every word
+spoken to her, leaping to her feet at every step that passed her
+cottage, springing from her sleep with a cry, "Who's there!" at every
+breeze that fumbled a shutter.
+
+But nothing happened; nobody came for her.
+
+The afternoon of the Liberty Loan drive was declared a half-holiday.
+The guards were doubled at the gates, and watchmen moved among the
+crowds; but strangers were admitted if they looked plausible, and
+several motor-loads of them rolled in. Some of them carried bundles of
+circulars and posters and application blanks. Some of them were of
+foreign aspect, since a large number of the workmen had to be
+addressed in other languages than English.
+
+Mamise drifted from one audience to another. She encountered her
+team-mate Pafflow and tried to find a speaker who was using his
+language.
+
+At length a voice of an intonation familiar to him threw him into an
+ecstasy. What was jargon to Mamise was native music to him, and she
+lingered at his elbow, pretending to share his thrill in order to
+increase it.
+
+She felt a twitch at her sleeve, and turned idly.
+
+Nicky Easton was at her side. Her mind, all her minds, began to
+convene in alarm like the crew of a ship attacked.
+
+"Nicky!" she gasped.
+
+"No names, pleass! But to follow me quick."
+
+"I'm right with you." She turned to follow him. "One minute." She
+stepped back and spoke fiercely to Pafflow. "Pafflow, find Mr.
+Davidge. Tell him Nicky is here. Remember, _Nicky is here_. It's life
+and death. Find him."
+
+Pafflow mumbled, "Nicky is here!" and Mamise ran after Nicky, who was
+lugging a large suit-case. He was quivering with excitement.
+
+"I didn't knew you in pentaloons, but Chake Nuttle pointet you owit,"
+he laughed.
+
+"Wh-where is Jake?"
+
+"He goes ahead vit a boondle of bombs. Nobody is on the _Schiff_. Ve
+could not have so good a chence again."
+
+Mamise might have, ought to have, seized him and cried for help; but
+she could not somehow throw off the character she had assumed with
+Nicky. She obeyed him in a kind of automatism. Her eyes searched the
+crowd for Larrey, who had kept all too close to her of recent days and
+nights. But he had fallen under the hypnotism of some too eloquent
+spellbinder.
+
+Mamise felt the need of doing a great heroic feat, but she could not
+imagine what it might be. Pending the arrival from heaven of some
+superfeminine inspiration, she simply went along to be in at the
+death.
+
+Pafflow was a bit stupid and two bits stubborn. He puzzled over
+Mamise's peculiar orders. He wanted to hear the rest of that fiery
+speech. He turned and stared after Mamise and noted the way she went,
+with the foppish stranger carrying the heavy baggage. But he was used
+to obeying orders after a little balking, and in time his slow brain
+started him on the hunt for Davidge. He quickened his pace and asked
+questions, being put off or directed hither and yon.
+
+At last he saw the boss sitting on a platform behind whose fluttering
+bunting a white-haired man was hurling noises at the upturned faces of
+the throng. Pafflow supposed that his jargon was English.
+
+Getting to Davidge was not easy. But Pafflow was stubborn. He pushed
+as close to the front as he could, and there a wall of bodies held
+him.
+
+The orator was checked in full career with almost fatal results by the
+sudden bellowing of a voice from the crowd below. He supposed that he
+was being heckled. He paused among the ruins of his favorite period,
+and said:
+
+"Well, my friend, what is it?"
+
+Pafflow ignored him and shouted: "Meesta Davutch! O-o-h, Meesta
+Davutch. Neecky is here."
+
+Davidge, hearing his name bruited, rose and called into the mob,
+"What's that?"
+
+"Neecky is here."
+
+When Davidge understood he was staggered. For a moment he stood in a
+stupor. Then he apologized to the speaker. "An emergency call. Please
+forgive me and go right on!"
+
+He bowed to the other distinguished guests and left the platform.
+Pafflow found him and explained.
+
+"Moll, the passer-boy, my gang, she say find you, life and death, and
+say Neecky is here! I doan' know what she means, but now I find you."
+
+"Which way--where--did you--have you an idea where she went?"
+
+"She go over by new ship _Mamise_--weeth gentleman all dressy up."
+
+Davidge ran toward the scaffolding surrounding the almost finished
+hull. He recognized one or two of his plain-clothes guards and stopped
+just long enough to tell them to get together and search every ship at
+once, and to make no excitement about it.
+
+The scaffolding was like a jungle, and he prowled through it with
+caution and desperate speed, up and down the swaying, cleated planks
+and in and out of the hull.
+
+He searched the hold first, expecting that Nicky would naturally plant
+his explosives there. That indeed was his scheme, but Mamise had found
+among her tumbled wits one little idea only, and that was to delay
+Nicky as long as possible.
+
+She suggested to him that before he began to lay his train of wires he
+ought to get a general view of the string of ships. The best point was
+the top deck, where they were just about to hoist the enormous rudder
+to the stern-post.
+
+Nicky accepted the suggestion, and Mamise guided him through the
+labyrinth. They had met Jake at the base of the falsework, and he came
+along, leaving his bundle. Nicky carried his suit-case with him. He
+did not intend to be separated from it. Jake was always glad to be
+separated from work.
+
+They made the climb, and Nicky's artistic soul lingered to praise the
+beautiful day for the beautiful deed. In a frenzy of talk, Mamise
+explained to him what she could. She pointed to the great hatchway for
+the locomotives and told him:
+
+"The ship would have been in the water now if it weren't for that big
+hatch. It set us--the company back ninety days."
+
+"And now the ship goes to be in the sky in about nine minutes. Come
+along once."
+
+"Look down here, how deep it is!" said Mamise, and led him to the
+edge. She was ready to thrust him into the pit, but he kept a firm
+grip on a rope, and she sighed with regret.
+
+But Davidge, looking up from the depth of the well, saw Nicky and
+Mamise peering over the edge. His face vanished.
+
+"Who iss?" said Nicky. "Somebody is below dere. Who iss?"
+
+Mamise said she did not know, and Jake had not seen.
+
+Nicky was in a flurry. The fire in Davidge's eyes told him that
+Davidge was looking for him. There was a dull sound in the hitherto
+silent ship of some one running.
+
+Nicky grew hysterical with wrath. To be caught at the very outset of
+his elaborate campaign was maddening. He opened his suit-case, took
+out from the protecting wadding a small iron death-machine and held it
+in readiness. A noble plan had entered his brain for rescuing his
+dream.
+
+Nuddle, glancing over the side, recognized Davidge and told Nicky who
+it was that came. When Davidge reached the top deck, he found Nicky
+smiling with the affability of a floorwalker.
+
+"Meester Davitch--please, one momend. I holt in my hant a little
+machine to blow us all high-sky if you are so unkind to be impolite.
+You move--I srow. We all go up togedder in much pieces. Better it is
+you come with me and make no trouble, and then I let you safe your
+life. You agree, yes? Or must I srow?"
+
+Davidge looked at the bomb, at Nicky, at Nuddle, then at Mamise. Life
+was sweet here on this high steel crag, with the cheers of the crowds
+about the stands coming faintly up on the delicious breeze. He knew
+explosives. He had seen them work. He could see what that handful of
+lightning in Nicky's grasp would do to this mountain he had built.
+
+Life was sweet where the limpid river spread its indolent floods far
+and wide. And Mamise was beautiful. The one thing not sweet and not
+beautiful was the triumph of this sardonic Hun.
+
+Davidge pondered but did not speak.
+
+With all the superiority of the Kultured German for the untutored
+Yankee, Nicky said, "Vell?"
+
+Perhaps it was the V that did it. For Davidge, without a word, went
+for him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The most tremendous explosives refuse to explode unless some detonator
+like fulminate of mercury is set off first. Each of us has his own
+fulminate, and the snap of a little cap of it brings on our
+cataclysm.
+
+It was a pity, seeing how many Germans were alienated from their
+country by the series of its rulers' crimes, and seeing how many
+German names were in the daily lists of our dead, that the word and
+the accent grew so hateful to the American people. It was a pity, but
+the Americans were not to blame if the very intonation of a Teutonism
+made their ears tingle.
+
+Davidge prized life and had no suicidal inclinations or temptations.
+No imaginable crisis in his affairs could have convinced him to
+self-slaughter. He was brave, but cautious.
+
+Even now, if Nicky Easton, poising the bombshell with its appalling
+threat, had murmured a sardonic "Well?" Davidge would probably have
+smiled, shrugged, and said:
+
+"You've got the bead on me, partner. I'm yours." He would have gone
+along as Nicky's prisoner, waiting some better chance to recover his
+freedom.
+
+But the mal-pronunciation of the shibboleth strikes deep centers of
+racial feeling and makes action spring faster than thought. The
+Sicilians at vespers asked the Frenchmen to pronounce "cheecheree,"
+and slew them when they said "sheesheree." So Easton snapped a
+fulminate in Davidge when his Prussian tongue betrayed him into that
+impertinent, intolerable alien "Vell?"
+
+Davidge was helpless in his own frenzy. He leaped.
+
+Nicky could not believe his eyes. He paused for an instant's
+consideration. As a football-player hesitates a sixteenth of a second
+too long before he passes the ball or punts it, and so forfeits his
+opportunity, so Nicky Easton stood and stared for the length of time
+it takes the eyes to widen.
+
+That was just too long for him and just long enough for Davidge, who
+went at him football fashion, hurling himself through the air like a
+vast, sprawling tarantula. Nicky's grip on the bomb relaxed. It fell
+from his hand. Davidge swiped at it wildly, smacked it, and knocked it
+out of bounds beyond the deck. Then Davidge's hundred-and-eighty-pound
+weight smote the light and wickery frame of Nicky and sent him
+collapsing backward, staggering, wavering, till he, too, went
+overboard.
+
+Davidge hit the deck like a ball-player sliding for a base, and he
+went slithering to the edge. He would have followed Nicky over the
+hundred-foot steel precipice if Mamise had not flung herself on him
+and caught his heel. He was stopped with his right arm dangling out in
+space and his head at the very margin of the deck.
+
+In this very brief meanwhile Jake Nuddle, who had been panic-stricken
+at the sight of the bomb in Nicky's hand, had been backing away
+slowly. He would have backed into the abyss if he had not struck a
+stanchion and clutched it desperately.
+
+And now the infernal-machine reached bottom. It lighted on the huge
+blade of the ship's anchor lying on a wharf waiting to be hoisted into
+place. The shell burst with an all-rending roar and sprayed rags of
+steel in every direction. The upward stream caught Nicky in midair and
+shattered him to shreds.
+
+Nuddle's whole back was obliterated and half a corpse fell forward,
+headless, on the deck. Davidge's right arm was ripped from the
+shoulder and his hat vanished, all but the brim.
+
+Mamise was untouched by the bombardment, but the downward rain of
+fragments tore her flesh as she lay sidelong.
+
+The bomb, exploding in the open air, lost much of its efficiency, but
+the part of the ship nearest was crumpled like an old tomato-can that
+a boy has placed on a car track to be run over.
+
+The crash with its reverberations threw the throngs about the
+speakers' stands into various panics, some running away from the
+volcano, some toward it. Many people were knocked down and trampled.
+
+Larrey and his men were the first to reach the deck. They found
+Davidge and Mamise in a pool of blood rapidly enlarging as the torn
+arteries in Davidge's shoulder spouted his life away. A quick
+application of first aid saved him until the surgeon attached to the
+shipyard could reach him.
+
+Mamise's injuries were painful and cruel, but not dangerous. Of
+Jake Nuddle there was not enough left to assure Larrey of his
+identification. Of Nicky Easton there was so little trace that the
+first searchers did not know that he had perished.
+
+Davidge and Mamise were taken to the hospital, and when Davidge was
+restored to consciousness his first words were a groan of awful
+satisfaction:
+
+"I got a German!"
+
+When he learned that he had no longer a right arm he smiled again and
+muttered:
+
+"It's great to be wounded for your country."
+
+Which was a rather inelegant paraphrase of the classic "_Dulce et
+decorum_," but caught its spirit admirably.
+
+Of Jake Nuddle he knew nothing and forgot everything till some days
+later, when he was permitted to speak to Mamise, in whose welfare he
+was more interested than his own, and the story of whose unimportant
+wounds harrowed him more than his own.
+
+Her voice came to him over the bedside telephone. After an exchange of
+the inevitable sympathies and regrets and tendernesses, Mamise
+sighed:
+
+"Well, we're luckier than poor Jake."
+
+"We are? What happened to him?"
+
+"He was killed, horribly. His pitiful wife! Abbie has been here and
+she is inconsolable. He was her idol--not a very pretty one, but idols
+are not often pretty. It's too terribly bad, isn't it?"
+
+Davidge's bewildered silence was his epitaph for Jake. Even though he
+were dead, one could hardly praise him, though, now that he was dead,
+Davidge felt suddenly that he must have been indeed the first and the
+eternal victim of his own qualities.
+
+Jake had been a complainer, a cynic, a loafer always from his cradle
+on--indeed, his mother used to say that he nearly kicked her to death
+before he was born.
+
+Mamise had hated and loathed him, but she felt now that Abbie had been
+righter than she in loving the wretch who had been dowered with no
+beauty of soul or body.
+
+She waited for Davidge to say something. After a long silence, she
+asked:
+
+"Are you there?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You don't say anything about poor Jake."
+
+"I--I don't know what to say."
+
+He felt it hateful to withhold praise from the dead, and yet a kind of
+honesty forced him to oppose the habit of lauding all who have just
+died, since it cheapened the praise of the dead who deserve praise--or
+what we call "deserve."
+
+Mamise spoke in a curiously unnatural tone: "It was noble of poor Jake
+to give his life trying to save the ship, wasn't it?"
+
+"What's that?" said Davidge, and she spoke with labored precision.
+
+"I say that you and I, who were the only witnesses, feel sorry that
+poor Jake had to be killed in the struggle with Easton."
+
+"Oh, I see! Yes--yes," said Davidge, understanding.
+
+Mamise went on: "Mr. Larrey was here and he didn't know who Jake was
+till I told him how he helped you try to disarm Nicky. It will be a
+fine thing for poor Abbie and her children to remember that, won't
+it?"
+
+Davidge's heart ached with a sudden appreciation of the sweet purpose
+of Mamise's falsehood.
+
+"Yes, yes," he said. "I'll give Abbie a pension on his account."
+
+"That's beautiful of you!"
+
+And so it was done. It pleased a sardonic fate to let Jake Nuddle pose
+in his tomb as the benefactor he had always pretended to be.
+
+The operative, Larrey, had made many adverse reports against him, but
+in the blizzard of reports against hundreds of thousands of suspects
+that turned the Department of Justice files into a huge snowdrift
+these earlier accounts of Nuddle's treasonable utterances and deeds
+were forgotten.
+
+The self-destruction of Nicky Easton took its brief space in the
+newspapers overcrowded with horrors, and he, too, was all but
+forgotten.
+
+When, after some further time, Mamise was able to call upon Davidge in
+her wheeled chair, she found him strangely lacking in cordiality. She
+was bitterly hurt at first, until she gleaned from his manner that he
+was trying to remove himself gracefully from her heart because of his
+disability.
+
+She amazed him by her sudden laughter. He was always slow to
+understand why his most solemn or angry humor gave her so much
+amusement.
+
+While her nurse and his were talking at a little distance it pleased
+her to lean close to Davidge and tease him excruciatingly with a
+flirtatious manner.
+
+"Before very long I'm going to take up that bet we made."
+
+"What bet?"
+
+"That the next proposal would come from me. I'm going to propose the
+first of next week."
+
+"If you do, I'll refuse you."
+
+Though she understood him perfectly, it pleased her to assume a motive
+he had never dreamed of.
+
+"Oh, you mustn't think that I'm going to be an invalid for life. The
+doctor says I'll be as well as ever in a little while."
+
+Davidge could not see how he was to tell her that he didn't mean that
+without telling her just what he did mean. In his tormented petulance
+he turned his back on her and groaned.
+
+"Oh, go away and let me alone."
+
+She was laughing beyond the limits called ladylike as she began to
+wheel her chair toward the door. The nurse ran after her, asking:
+
+"What on earth?"
+
+Mamise assured, "Nothing on earth, but a lot in heaven," and would not
+explain the riddle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Davidge was the modern ideal of an executive. He appeared never to do
+any work. He kept an empty desk and when he was away no one missed
+him. He would not use a roll-top desk, but sat at a flat table with
+nothing on it but a memorandum-pad, a calendar, an "in" and an "out"
+basket, both empty most of the time.
+
+He had his work so organized that it went on in his absence as if he
+were there. He insisted that the executives of the departments should
+follow the same rule. If they were struck down in battle their places
+were automatically supplied as in the regular army.
+
+So when Davidge went to the hospital the office machine went on as if
+he had gone to lunch.
+
+Mamise called on him oftener than he had called on her. She left the
+hospital in a few days after the explosion, but she did not step into
+his office and run the corporation for him as a well-regulated heroine
+of recent fiction would have done. She did not feel that she knew
+enough. And she did not know enough. She kept to her job with the
+riveting-gang and expected to be discharged any day for lack of pull
+with the new boss.
+
+But while she lasted she was one of the gang, and proud of it. She was
+neither masculine nor feminine, but human. As Vance Thompson has said,
+the lioness is a lion all but a little of the time, and so Mamise put
+off sexlessness with her overalls and put it on with her petticoats.
+She put off the coarseness at the same time as she scrubbed away the
+grime.
+
+The shipyard was still a realm of faery to her. It was an unending
+experience of miracles, commonplace to the men, but wonder-work to
+her. She had not known what "pneumatic" or "hydraulic" really meant.
+The acetylene flame-knife, the incomprehensible ability of levers to
+give out so much more power than was put in them, dazed her. Nothing
+in the Grimms' stories could parallel the benevolent ogres of air and
+water and their dumfounding transformations.
+
+She learned that machinery can be as beautiful as any other human
+structure. Fools and art-snobs had said that machinery is ugly, and
+some of it is indeed nearly as ugly as some canvases, verses, and
+cathedrals. Other small-pates chattered of how the divine works of
+nature shamed the crudities of man. They spoke of the messages of the
+mountains, the sublimities of sunsets, and the lessons taught by the
+flowerets. These things are impressive, but it ought to be possible to
+give them praise without slandering man's creations, for a God that
+could make a man that could make a work of art would have to be a
+better God than one who could merely make a work of art himself.
+
+But machinery has its messages, too. It enables the little cave-dweller
+to pulverize the mountain; to ship it to Mohammed in Medina; to pick it
+up and shoot it at his enemies.
+
+Mamise, at any rate, was so enraptured by the fine art of machinery
+that when she saw a traveling-crane pick up a mass of steel and go
+down the track with it to its place, she thought that no poplar-tree
+was ever so graceful. And the rusty hulls of the new ships showing the
+sky through the steel lace of their rivetless sides were fairer than
+the sky.
+
+Surgeons in steel operated on the battered epidermis of the _Mamise_
+and sewed her up again. It was slow work and it had all the
+discouraging influence of work done twice for one result. But the toil
+went on, and when at last Davidge left the hospital he was startled by
+the change in the vessel. As a father who has left a little girl at
+home comes back to find her a grown woman, so he saw an almost
+finished ship where he had left a patchwork of iron plates.
+
+It thrilled him to be back at work again. The silence of the hospital
+had irked his soul. Here the air was full of the pneumatic riveter.
+They called it the gun that would win the war. The shipyard atmosphere
+was shattered all day long as if with machine-gun fire and the
+riveters were indeed firing at Germany. Every red-hot rivet was a
+bullet's worth.
+
+The cry grew louder for ships. The submarine was cutting down the
+world's whole fleet by a third. In February the Germans sank the
+_Tuscania_, loaded with American soldiers, and 159 of them were lost.
+Uncle Sam tightened his lips and added the _Tuscania's_ dead soldiers
+to the _Lusitania's_ men and women and children on the invoice against
+Germany. He tightened his belt, too, and cut down his food for
+Europe's sake. He loosened his purse-strings and poured out gold and
+bonds and war-savings stamps, borrowing, lending, and spending with
+the desperation of a gambler determined to break the bank.
+
+While Davidge was still in the hospital the German offensive broke. It
+succeeded beyond the scope of the blackest prophecy. It threw the fear
+of hell into the stoutest hearts. All over the country people were
+putting pins in maps, always putting them farther back. Everybody
+talked strategy, and geography became the most dreadful of topics.
+
+On March 29th Pershing threw what American troops were abroad into the
+general stock, gave them to Haig and Foch to use as they would.
+
+On the same day the mysterious giant cannon of the Germans sent a
+shell into Paris, striking a church and killing seventy-five
+worshipers. And it was on a Good Friday that the men of _Gott_ sent
+this harbinger of good-will.
+
+The Germans began to talk of the end of Great Britain, the erasure of
+France, and the reduction of America to her proper place.
+
+Spring came to the dismal world again with a sardonic smile. In
+Washington the flower-duel was renewed between the Embassy terrace and
+the Louise Home. The irises made a drive and the forsythia sent up its
+barrage. The wistaria and the magnolia counterattacked. The Senator
+took off his wig again to give official sanction to summer and to rub
+his bewildered head the better.
+
+The roving breezes fluttered tragic newspapers everywhere--in the
+parks, on the streets, on the scaffolds of the buildings, along the
+tented lanes, and in the barrack-rooms.
+
+This wind was a love-zephyr as of old. But the world was frosted with
+a tremendous fear. What if old England fell? Empires did fall.
+Nineveh, Babylon, and before them Ur and Nippur, and, after, Persia
+and Alexander's Greece and Rome. Germany was making the great try to
+renew Rome's sway; her Emperor called himself the Cæsar. What if he
+should succeed?
+
+Distraught by so many successes, the Germans grew frantic. They were
+diverted from one prize to another.
+
+The British set their backs to the wall. The French repeated their
+Verdun watchword, "No thoroughfare," and the Americans began to come
+up. The Allies were driven finally to what they had always realized to
+be necessary, but had never consented to--a unified command. They put
+all their destinies into the hands of Foch.
+
+Instantly and melodramatically the omens changed. Foch could live up
+to his own motto now, "Attack, attack, attack." He had been like a man
+gambling his last francs. Now he had word that unlimited funds were on
+the way from his Uncle Sam. He did not have to count his money over
+and over. He could squander it regardless.
+
+In every direction he attacked, attacked, attacked. The stupefied
+world saw the German hordes checked, driven rearward, here, there, the
+other place.
+
+Towns were redeemed, rivers regained, prisoners scooped up by the ten
+thousand. The pins began a great forward march along the maps. People
+fought for the privilege of placing them. Geography became the most
+fascinating sport ever known.
+
+Davidge had come from the hospital minus one arm just as the bulletins
+changed from grave to gay. He was afraid now that the war would be
+over before his ships could share the glorious part that ships played
+in all this victory. The British had turned all their hulls to the
+American shores and the American troops were pouring into them in
+unbelievable floods.
+
+Secrecy lost its military value. The best strategy that could be
+devised was to publish just how many Americans were landing in
+France.
+
+General March would carry the news to Secretary Baker and he would
+scatter it broadcast through George Creel's Committee on Public
+Information, using telegraph, wireless, telephone, cable, post-office,
+placard, courier.
+
+Davidge had always said that the war would be over as soon as the
+Germans got the first real jolt. With them war was a business and they
+would withdraw from it the moment they foresaw a certain bankruptcy
+ahead.
+
+But there was the war after the war to be considered--the war for
+commerce, the postponed war with disgruntled labor and the impatient
+varieties of socialists and with the rabid Bolshevists frankly
+proclaiming their intention to destroy civilization as it stood.
+
+Like a prudent skipper, Davidge began to trim his ship for the new
+storm that must follow the old. He took thought of the rivalries that
+would spring up inevitably between the late Allies, like brothers now,
+but doomed to turn upon one another with all the greater bitterness
+after war. For peace hath her wickedness no less renowned than war.
+
+What would labor do when the spell of consecration to the war was gone
+and the pride of war wages must go before a fall? The time would come
+abruptly when the spectacle of employers begging men to work at any
+price would be changed to the spectacle of employers having no work
+for men--at any price.
+
+The laborers would not surrender without a battle. They had tasted
+power and big money and they would not be lulled by economic
+explanations.
+
+Mamise came upon Davidge one day in earnest converse with a faithful
+old toiler who had foreseen the same situation and wanted to know what
+his boss thought about it.
+
+Iddings had worked as a mechanic all his life. He had worked hard, had
+lived sober, had turned his wages over to his wife, and spent them on
+his home and his children.
+
+He was as good a man as could be found. Latterly he had been tormented
+by two things, the bitterness of increasing infirmities and dwindling
+power and the visions held out to him by Jake Nuddle and the disciples
+Jake had formed before he was taken away.
+
+As Mamise came up in her overalls Iddings was saying:
+
+"It ain't right, boss, and you know it. When a man like me works as
+hard as I done and cuts out all the fun and the booze and then sees
+old age comin' on and nothin' saved to speak of and no chance to save
+more'n a few hundred dollars, whilst other men has millions--why, I'm
+readin' the other day of a woman spendin' eighty thousand dollars on a
+fur coat, and my old woman slavin' like a horse all her life and goin'
+round in a plush rag--I tell you it ain't right and you can't prove it
+is."
+
+"I'm not going to try to," said Davidge. "I didn't build the world
+and I can't change it much. I see nothing but injustice everywhere I
+look. It's not only among men, but among animals and insects and
+plants. The weeds choke out the flowers; the wolves eat up the sheep
+unless the dogs fight the wolves; the gentle and the kind go under
+unless they're mighty clever. They call it the survival of the
+fittest, but it's really the survival of the fightingest."
+
+"That's what I'm comin' to believe," said Iddings. "The workman will
+never get his rights unless he fights for 'em."
+
+"Never."
+
+"And if he wants to get rich he's got to fight the rich."
+
+"No. He wants to make sure he's fighting his real enemies and fighting
+with weapons that won't be boomerangs."
+
+"I don't get that last."
+
+"Look here, Iddings, there are a lot of damned fools filling workmen's
+heads with insanity, telling them that their one hope of happiness is
+to drag down the rich, to blow up the factories or take control of
+'em, to bankrupt the bankers and turn the government upside down. If
+they can't get a majority at the polls they won't pay any attention to
+the polls or the laws. They'll butcher the police and assassinate the
+big men. But that game can't win. It's been tried again and again by
+discontented idiots who go out and kill instead of going out to work.
+
+"You can't get rich by robbing the rich and dividing up their money.
+If you took all that Rockefeller is said to have and divided it up
+among the citizens of the country you'd get four or five dollars
+apiece at most, and you'd soon lose that.
+
+"Rockefeller started as a laboring-man at wages you wouldn't look at
+to-day. The laboring-men alongside could have made just as much as he
+did if they'd a mind to. Somebody said he could have written
+Shakespeare's plays if he had a mind to, and Lamb said, 'Yes, if you'd
+a mind to.' The thing seems to be to be born with a mind to and to
+cultivate a mind to.
+
+"You take Rockefeller's money away and he'll make more while you're
+fumbling with what you've got. Take Shakespeare's plays away and he'll
+write others while you're scratching your head.
+
+"Don't let 'em fool you, Iddings, into believing that rich men get
+rich by stealing. We all cheat more or less, but no man ever built up
+a big fortune by plain theft. Men make money by making it.
+
+"Karl Marx, who wrote your 'Workmen's Bible,' called capital a
+vampire. Well, there aren't any vampires except in the movies.
+
+"Speaking of vamping wealth, did you ever hear how I got where I
+am?--not that it's so very far and not that I like to talk about
+myself--but just to show you how true your man Marx is.
+
+"I was a working-man and worked hard. I put by a little out of what I
+made. Of nights I studied. I learned all ends of the ship-building
+business in a way. But I needed money to get free. It never occurred
+to me to claim somebody else's money as mine. I thought the rich would
+help me to get rich if I helped them to get richer. My idea of getting
+capital was to go get it. I was a long time finding where there was
+any.
+
+"By and by I heard of an old wreck on the coast--a steamer had run
+aground and the hull was abandoned after they took out what machinery
+they could salvage. The hull stood up in the storms and the sand began
+to bury it. It would have been 'dead capital' then for sure.
+
+"The timbers were sound, though, and I found I could buy it cheap. I
+put in all I had saved in all my life, eight thousand dollars, for the
+hull. I got a man to risk something with me.
+
+"We took the hull off the ground, refitted it, stepped in six masts,
+and made a big schooner of her.
+
+"She cost us sixty thousand dollars all told. Before she was ready to
+sail we sold her for a hundred and twenty thousand. The buyers made
+big money out of her. The schooner is carrying food now and giving
+employment to sailors.
+
+"Who got robbed on that transaction? Where did 'dead labor suck the
+life out of living labor,' as Karl Marx says? You could do the same.
+You could if you would. There's plenty of old hulls lying around on
+the sands of the world."
+
+Iddings had nothing in him to respond to the poetry of this.
+
+"That's all very fine," he growled, "but where would I get my start? I
+got no eight thousand or anybody to lend me ten dollars."
+
+"The banks will lend to men who will make money make money. It's not
+the guarantee they want so much as inspiration. Pierpont Morgan said
+he lent on character, not on collateral."
+
+"Morgan, humph!"
+
+"The trouble isn't with Morgan, but with you. What do you do with your
+nights? Study? study? beat your brains for ideas? No, you go home,
+tired, play with the children, talk with the wife, smoke, go to bed.
+It's a beautiful life, but it's not a money-making life. You can't
+make money by working eight hours a day for another man's money.
+You've got to get out and find it or dig it up.
+
+"That business with the old hull put me on my feet, put dreams in my
+head. I looked about for other chances, took some of them and wished I
+hadn't. But I kept on trying. The war in Europe came. The world was
+crazy for ships. They couldn't build 'em fast enough to keep ahead of
+the submarines. On the Great Lakes there was a big steamer not doing
+much work. I heard of her. I went up and saw her. The job was to get
+her to the ocean. I managed it on borrowed money, bought her, and
+brought her up the Saint Lawrence to the sea--and down to New York. I
+made a fortune on that deal. Then did I retire and smoke my pipe of
+peace? No. I looked for another chance.
+
+"When our country went into the war she needed ships of her own. She
+had to have shipyards first to build 'em in. My lifelong ambition was
+to make ships from the keel-plate up. I looked for the best place to
+put a shipyard, picked on this spot because other people hadn't found
+it. My partners and I got the land cheap because it was swamp. We
+worked out our plans, sitting up all night over blue-prints and
+studying how to save every possible penny and every possible waste
+motion.
+
+"And now look at the swamp. It's one of the prettiest yards in the
+world. The Germans sank my _Clara_. Did I stop or go to making
+speeches about German vampires? No. I went on building.
+
+"The Germans tried to get my next boat. I fought for her as I'll fight
+the Germans, the I. W. W., the Bolshevists, or any other sneaking
+coyotes that try to destroy my property.
+
+"I lost this right arm trying to save that ship. And now that I'm
+crippled, am I asking for a pension or an admission to an old folks'
+home? Am I passing the hat to you other workers? No. I'm as good as
+ever I was. I made my left arm learn my right arm's business. If I
+lose my left arm next I'll teach my feet to write. And if I lose
+those, by God! I'll write with my teeth, or wigwag my ears.
+
+"The trouble with you, Iddings, and the like of you is you brood over
+your troubles, instead of brooding over ways to improve yourself. You
+spend time and money on quack doctors. But I tell you, don't fight
+your work or your boss. Fight nature, fight sleep, fight fatigue,
+fight the sky, fight despair, and if you want money hunt up a place
+where it's to be found."
+
+If Iddings had had brains enough to understand all this he would not
+have been Iddings working by the day. His stubborn response was:
+
+"Well, I'll say the laboring-man is being bled by the capitalists and
+he'll never get his rights till he grabs 'em."
+
+"And I'll say be sure that you're grabbing your rights and not
+grabbing your own throat.
+
+"I'm for all the liberty in the world, for the dignity of labor, the
+voice of labor, the labor-union, the profit-sharing basis, the
+republic of labor. I think the workers ought to have a voice in
+running the work--all the share they can handle, all the control that
+won't hurt the business. But the business has got to come first, for
+it's business that makes comfort. I'll let any man run this shop who
+can run it as well as I can or better.
+
+"What I'm against is letting somebody run my business who can't run
+his own. Talk won't build ships, old man. And complaints and protests
+won't build ships, or make any important money.
+
+"Poor men are just as good as rich men and ought to have just the same
+rights, votes, privileges. But the first right a poor man ought to
+preserve is the right to become a rich man. Riches are beautiful
+things, Iddings, and they're worth working for. And they've got to be
+worked for.
+
+"A laboring-man is a man that labors, whether he labors for two
+dollars a day or a thousand; and a loafer is a loafer, whether he has
+millions or dimes. Well, I've talked longer than I ever did before or
+ever will again. Do you believe anything I say?"
+
+"No."
+
+Davidge had to laugh. "Well, Iddings, I've got to hand it to you for
+obstinacy; you've got an old mule skinned to death. But old mules
+can't compete with race-horses. Balking and kicking won't get you very
+far."
+
+He walked away, and Mamise went along. Davidge was in a somber mood.
+
+"Poor old fellow, he's got no self-starter, no genius, no ideas, and
+he's doomed to be a drudge. It's the rotten cruelty of the world that
+most people are born without enough get-up-and-get to bring them and
+their work together without a whistle and a time-clock and an
+overseer. What scheme could ever be invented to keep poor old Iddings
+up to the level of a Sutton or a Sutton down to his?"
+
+Mamise had heard a vast amount of discontented talk among the men.
+
+"There's an awful lot of trouble brewing."
+
+"Trouble is no luxury to me," said Davidge. "Blessed is he that
+expects trouble, for he shall get it. Wait till this war is over and
+then you'll see a real war."
+
+"Shall we all get killed or starved?"
+
+"Probably. But in the mean while we had better sail on and on and on.
+The storm will find us wherever we are, and there's more danger close
+ashore than out at sea. Let's make a tour of the _Mamise_ and see how
+soon she'll be ready to go overboard."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Nicky Easton's attempt to assassinate the ship had failed, but the
+wounds he dealt her had retarded her so that she missed by many weeks
+the chance of being launched on the Fourth of July with the other
+ships that made the Big Splash on that holy day. The first boat took
+her dive at one minute after midnight and eighty-one ships followed
+her into the astonished sea.
+
+While the damaged parts of the _Mamise_ were remade, Davidge pushed
+the work on other portions of the ship's anatomy, so that when at
+length she was ready for the dip she was farther advanced than steel
+ships usually are before they are first let into the sea.
+
+Her upper works were well along, her funnel was in, and her mast and
+bridge. She looked from a distance like a ship that had run ashore.
+
+There was keen rivalry among the building-crews of the ships that grew
+alongside the _Mamise_, and each gang strove to put its boat overboard
+in record time. The "Mamisers," as they called themselves, fought
+against time and trouble to redeem her from the "jinx" that had set
+her back again and again. During the last few days the heat was
+furious and the hot plates made an inferno of the work. Then an icy
+rain set in. The workers would not stop for mean weather, hot or
+cold.
+
+Mamise, the rivet-passer, stood to her task in a continual shower-bath.
+The furnace was sheltered, but the hot rivets must be passed across
+the rain curtain. Sutton urged her to lay off and give way to Snotty
+or somebody whose health didn't matter a damn. Davidge ordered her
+home, but her pride in her sex and her zest for her ship kept her at
+work.
+
+And then suddenly she sneezed!
+
+She sneezed again and again helplessly, and she was stricken with a
+great fear. For in that day a sneeze was not merely the little
+explosion of tickled surfaces or a forewarning of a slight cold. It
+was the alarum of the new Great Death, the ravening lion under the
+sheep's wool of influenza.
+
+The world that had seen the ancient horror of famine come stalking
+back from the Dark Ages trembled now before the plague. The influenza
+swept the world with recurrent violences.
+
+Men who had feared to go to the trenches were snatched from their
+offices and from their homes. Men who had tried in vain to get into
+the fight died in their beds. Women and children perished innumerably.
+Hearse-horses were overworked. The mysterious, invisible all-enemy did
+not spare the soldiers; it sought them in the dugouts, among the
+reserves, at the ports of embarkation and debarkation, at the
+training-camps. In the hospitals it slew the convalescent wounded and
+killed the nurses.
+
+From America the influenza took more lives than the war itself.
+
+It baffled science and carried off the doctors. Masks appeared and
+people in offices were dressed in gauze muzzles. In some of the cities
+the entire populace went with bandaged mouths, and a man who would
+steal a furtive puff of a cigarette stole up a quiet street and kept
+his eyes alert for the police.
+
+Whole families were stricken down and brave women who dared the
+pestilence found homes where father, mother, and children lay writhing
+and starving in pain and delirium.
+
+At the shipyard every precaution was taken, and Davidge fought the
+unseen hosts for his men and for their families. Mamise had worn
+herself down gadding the workmen's row with medicines and victuals in
+her basket. And yet the death-roll mounted and strength was no
+protection.
+
+In Washington and other cities the most desperate experiments in
+sanitation were attempted. Offices were closed or dismissed early.
+Stenographers took dictation in masks. It was forbidden to crowd the
+street-cars. All places of public assembly were closed, churches no
+less than theaters and moving-picture shows. It was as illegal to hold
+prayer-meetings as dances.
+
+This was the supreme blow at religion. The preachers who had confessed
+that the Church had failed to meet the war problems were dazed.
+Mankind had not recovered from the fact that the world had been made a
+hell by the German Emperor, who was the most pious of rulers and
+claimed to take his crown from God direct. The German Protestants and
+priests had used their pulpits for the propaganda of hate. The
+Catholic Emperor of Austria had aligned his priests. Catholic and
+Protestants fought for the Allies in the trenches, unfrocked or in
+their pulpits. The Bishop of London was booed as a slacker. The Pope
+wrung his hands and could not decide which way to turn. One British
+general frivolously put it, "I am afraid that the dear old Church has
+missed the bus this trip."
+
+All religions were split apart and, as Lincoln said of the Civil War,
+both sides sent up their prayers to the same God, demanding that He
+crush the enemy.
+
+For all the good the Y. M. C. A. accomplished, it ended the war with
+the contempt of most of the soldiers. Individual clergymen won love
+and crosses of war, but as men, not as saints.
+
+The abandoned world abandoned all its gods, and men fought men in the
+name of mankind.
+
+Even against the plague the churchfolk were refused permission to pray
+together. Christian Scientists published full pages of advertising
+protesting against the horrid situation, but nobody heeded.
+
+The ship of state lurched along through the mingled storms, mastless,
+rudderless, pilotless, priestless, and everybody wondered which would
+live the longer, the ship or the storm.
+
+And then Mamise sneezed. And the tiny at-choo! frightened her to the
+soul of her soul. It frightened the riveting-crew as well. The plague
+had come among them.
+
+"Drop them tongs and go home!" said Sutton.
+
+"I've got to help finish my ship," Mamise pleaded.
+
+"Go home, I tell you."
+
+"But she's to be launched day after to-morrow and I've got to christen
+her."
+
+"Go home or I'll carry you," said Sutton, and he advanced on her. She
+dropped her tongs and ran through the gusty rain, across the yard, out
+of the gate, and down the muddy paths as if a wolf pursued.
+
+She flung into her cottage, lighted the fires, heated water, drank a
+quart of it, took quinine, and crept into her bed. Her tremors shook
+the covers off. Sweat rained out of her pores and turned to ice-water
+with the following ague.
+
+The doctor came. Sutton had gone for him and threatened to beat him up
+if he delayed. The doctor had nothing to give her but orders to stay
+in bed and wait. Davidge came, and Abbie, and they tried to pretend
+that they were not in a worse panic than Mamise.
+
+There were no nurses to be spared and Abbie was installed. In spite of
+her malministrations or because of them, Mamise grew better. She
+stayed in bed all that day and the next, and when the morning of the
+launching dawned, she felt so well that Abbie could not prevent her
+from getting up and putting on her clothes.
+
+She was to be woman again to-day and to wear the most fashionable gown
+in her wardrobe and the least masculine hat.
+
+She felt a trifle giddy as she dressed, but she told Abbie that she
+never felt better. Her only alarm was the difficulty in hooking her
+frock at the waist. Abbie fought them together with all her might and
+main.
+
+"If being a workman is going to take away my waistline, here's where I
+quit work," said Mamise. "As Mr. Dooley says, I'm a pathrite, but I'm
+no bigot."
+
+Davidge had told her to keep to her room. He had telephoned to Polly
+Widdicombe to come down and christen the ship. Polly was delayed and
+Davidge was frantic. In fact, the Widdicombe motor ran off the road
+into a slough of despond, and Polly did not arrive until after the
+ship was launched from the ways and the foolhardy Mamise was in the
+hospital.
+
+When Davidge saw Mamise climbing the steps to the launching-platform
+he did not recognize her under her big hat till she paused for breath
+and looked up, counting the remaining steep steps and wondering if her
+tottering legs would negotiate the height.
+
+He ran down and haled her up, scolding her with fury. He had been on
+the go all night, and he was raw with uneasiness.
+
+"I'm all right," Mamise pleaded. "I got caught in the jam at the gate
+and was nearly crushed. That's all. It's glorious up here and I'd
+rather die than miss it."
+
+It was a sight to see. The shipyard was massed with workmen and their
+families, and every roof was crowded. On a higher platform in the rear
+the reporters of the moving-picture newspapers were waiting with their
+cameras. On the roof of a low shed a military band was tootling
+merrily.
+
+And the sky had relented of its rain. The day was a masterpiece of
+good weather. A brilliant throng mounted to the platform, an admiral,
+sea-captains and lieutenants, officers of the army, a Senator,
+Congressmen, judges, capitalists, the jubilant officers of the
+ship-building corporation. And Mamise was the queen of the day. She
+was the "sponsor" for the ship and her name stood out on both sides of
+the prow, high overhead where the launching-crew grinned down on her
+and called her by her _nom de guerre_, "Moll."
+
+The moving-picture men yelled at her and asked her to pose. She went
+to the rail and tried to smile, feeling as silly as a Sunday-school
+girl repeating a golden text, and looking it.
+
+Once more she would appear in the Sunday supplements, and her childish
+confusion would make throngs in moving-picture theaters laugh with
+pleasant amusement. Mamise was news to-day.
+
+The air was full of the hubbub of preparation. Underneath the upreared
+belly of the ship gnomes crouched, pounding the wedges in to lift the
+hull so that other gnomes could knock the shoring out.
+
+There was a strange fascination in the racket of the shores falling
+over, the dull clatter of a vast bowling-alley after a ten-strike.
+
+Painters were at work brushing over the spots where the shores had
+rested.
+
+Down in the tanks inside the hull were a few luckless anonymities with
+search-lights, put there to watch for leaks from loose rivet-heads.
+They would be in the dark and see nothing of the festival. Always
+there has to be some one in the dark at such a time.
+
+The men who would saw the holding-blocks stood ready, as solemn as
+clergymen. The cross-saws were at hand for their sacred office. The
+sawyers and the other workmen were overdoing their unconcern. Mamise
+caught sight of Sutton, lounging in violent indifference, but giving
+himself away by the frenzy of his jaws worrying his quid and spurting
+tobacco juice in all directions.
+
+There was reason, too, for uneasiness. Sometimes a ship would not
+start when the blocks were sawed through. There would be a long delay
+while hydraulic jacks were sought and put to work to force her
+forward. Such a delay had a superstitious meaning. Nobody liked a ship
+that was afraid of her element. They wanted an eagerness in her
+get-away. Or suppose she shot out too impetuously and listed on the
+ways, ripping the scaffolding to pieces like a whale thrashing a raft
+apart. Suppose she careened and stuck or rolled over in the mud. Such
+things had happened and might happen again. The _Mamise_ had suffered
+so many mishaps that the other ship crews called her a hoodoo.
+
+At last the hour drew close. Davidge was a fanatic on schedules. He
+did not want his ship to be late to her engagement.
+
+"She's named after me, poor thing," said Mamise. "She's bound to be
+late."
+
+"She'll be on time for once," Davidge growled.
+
+In the older days with the old-fashioned ships the boats had gone to
+the sea like brides with trousseaux complete. The launching-guests had
+made the journey with her; a dinner had been served aboard, and when
+the festivities were ended the waiting tugs had taken the new ship to
+the old sea for the honeymoon.
+
+But nowadays only hulls were launched, as a rule. The mere husk was
+then brought to the equipping-dock to receive her engines and all her
+equipment.
+
+The _Mamise_ was farther advanced, but she would have to tie up for
+sixty days at least. The carpenters had her furniture all ready and
+waiting, but she could not put forth under her own steam for two
+months more.
+
+The more reason for impatience at any further delay. Davidge went
+along the launching-platform rails, like a captain on the bridge,
+eager to move out of the slip.
+
+"Make ready!" he commanded. "Stand by! Where's the bottle? Good Lord!
+Where's the bottle?"
+
+That precious quart of champagne was missing now. The bottle had been
+prepared by an eminent jeweler with silver decoration and a silken
+net. The neck would be a cherished souvenir thereafter, made into a
+vase to hold flowers.
+
+The bottle was found, a cable was lowered from aloft and the bottle
+fastened to it.
+
+Davidge explained to Mamise for the tenth time just what she was to
+do. He gave the signal to the sawyers. The snarl of the teeth in the
+holding-blocks was lost in the noise of the band. The great whistle on
+the fabricating-plant split the air. The moving-picture camera-men
+cranked their machines. The last inches of the timbers that held the
+ship ashore were gnawed through. The sawyers said they could feel the
+ship straining. She wanted to get to her sea. They loved her for it.
+
+Suddenly she was "sawed off." She was moving. The rigid mountain was
+an avalanche of steel departing down a wooden hill.
+
+Mamise stared, gasped, paralyzed with launch-fright. Davidge nudged
+her. She hurled the bottle at the vanishing keel. It broke with a loud
+report. The wine splashed everywhichway. Some of it spattered Mamise's
+new gown.
+
+Her muscles went to work in womanly fashion to brush off the stain.
+
+When she looked up, ashamed of her homely misbehavior, she cried:
+
+"O Lord! I forgot to say, 'I christen thee _Mamise_.'"
+
+"Say it now," said Davidge.
+
+She shouted the words down the channel opening like an abyss as the
+vast hulk diminished toward the river. Far below she could see the
+water leap back from the shock of the new-comer. Great, circling
+ripples retreated outward. Waves fought and threw up bouquets of
+spume.
+
+The chute smoked with the heat of the ship's passage and a white cloud
+of steam flew up and followed her into the river.
+
+She was launched, beautifully, perfectly. She sailed level. She was
+water-borne.
+
+People were cheering, the band was pounding all out of time, every eye
+following the ship, the leader forgetting to lead.
+
+Mamise wept and Davidge's eyes were wet. Something surged in him like
+the throe of the river where the ship went in. It was good to have
+built a good ship.
+
+Mamise wrung his hand. She would have kissed him, but she remembered
+in time. The camera caught the impulse. People laughed at that in the
+movie theaters. People cheered in distant cities as they assisted
+weeks after in the début of _Mamise_.
+
+The movies took the people everywhere on magic carpets. Yet there were
+curious people who bewailed them as inartistic!
+
+Mamise's little body and her little soul were almost blasted by the
+enormity of her emotions. The ship was like a child too big for its
+mother, and the ending of the long travail left her wrecked.
+
+She tried to enter into the hilarity of the guests, but she was filled
+with awe and prostrate as if a god had passed by.
+
+The crowd began to trickle down the long steps to the feast in the
+mess hall. She dreaded the descent, the long walk, the sitting at
+table. She wanted to go home and cry very hard and be good and sick
+for a long while.
+
+But she could not desert Davidge at such a time or mar his triumph by
+her hypochondria. She wavered as she climbed down. She rode with
+Davidge to the mess-hall in his car and forced herself to voice
+congratulations too solemn and too fervid for words.
+
+The guests of honor sat at a table disguised with scenery as a ship's
+deck. A thousand people sat at the other tables and took part in the
+banquet.
+
+Mamise could not eat the food of human caterers. She had fed on
+honey-dew and drunk the milk of paradise.
+
+She lived through the long procession of dishes and heard some of the
+oratory, the glowing praises of Davidge and Uncle Sam, Mr. Schwab, Mr.
+Hurley, President Wilson, the Allies, and everybody else. She heard it
+proclaimed that America was going back to the sea, so long neglected.
+The prodigal was returning home.
+
+Mamise could think of nothing but a wish to be in bed. The room began
+to blur. People's faces went out of focus. Her teeth began to chatter.
+Her jaw worked ridiculously like a riveting-gun. She was furious at
+it.
+
+She heard Davidge whispering: "What's the matter, honey? You're ill
+again."
+
+"I--I fancy--I--I guess I--I--am," she faltered.
+
+"O God!" he groaned, "why did you come out?"
+
+He rose, lifted her elbow, murmured something to the guests. He would
+have supported her to the door, but she pleaded:
+
+"Don't! They'll think it's too much ch-ch-champagne. I'm all right!"
+
+She made the door in excellent control, but it cost her her last cent
+of strength. Outside, she would have fallen, but he huddled her in his
+arms, lifted her, carried her to his car. He piled robes on her, but
+those riveters inside her threatened to pound her to death. Burning
+pains gnawed her chest like cross-cut saws.
+
+When the car stopped she was not in front of her cottage, but before
+the hospital.
+
+When the doctor finished his inspection she heard him mumble to
+Davidge:
+
+"Pneumonia! Double pneumonia!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Once more Mamise had come between Davidge and his work. He did not
+care what happened to his ships or his shipyard. He watched Mamise
+fighting for life, if indeed she fought, for he could not get to her
+through the fog.
+
+She was often delirious and imagined herself back in her cruel times.
+He learned a few things about that mystic period she would never
+disclose. And he was glad that she had never told him more. He fled
+from her, for eavesdropping on a delirium has something of the
+contemptible quality of peeping at a nakedness.
+
+He supposed that Mamise would die. All the poor women with pasts that
+he had read about, in what few novels he had read, had died or it had
+been found out that they had magically retained their innocence
+through years of evil environment.
+
+He supposed also that Mamise would die, because that was the one thing
+needful to make his life a perfect failure. He had not gone to war,
+yet he had lost his arm. He had never really desperately loved before,
+and now he would lose his heart. It was just as well, because if
+Mamise lived he would lose her, anyway. He would not tie her to the
+crippled thing he was.
+
+While the battalions of disease ravaged the poor Belgium of Mamise's
+body the world outside went on making history. The German Empire kept
+caving in on all sides. Her armies held nowhere. Her only pride was in
+saving a defeat from being a disaster. Her confederates were
+disintegrating. The newspapers mentioned now, not cities that
+surrendered to the Allies, but nations.
+
+And at last Germany added one more to her unforgivable assaults upon
+the patience of mankind. Just as the Allies poised for the last
+tremendous all-satisfying _coup de grâce_ the Empire put up her hands
+and whined the word that had become the world-wide synonym for
+poltroonery, "_Kamerad!_"
+
+Foch wept, American soldiers cursed because they could not prove their
+mettle and drive the boche into the Rhine. Never was so bitter a
+disappointment mingled with a triumph so magnificent. The world went
+wild with the news of peace. The nations all made carnival over the
+premature rumor and would not be denied their rhapsodies because the
+story was denied. They made another and a wilder carnival when the
+news was confirmed.
+
+Davidge took the peace without enthusiasm. Mamise had been better, but
+was worse again. She got still better than before and not quite so
+worse again. And so in a climbing zigzag she mounted to health at
+last.
+
+She had missed the carnival and she woke on the morning after. Nearly
+everybody was surprised to find that ending this one war had brought a
+dozen new wars, a hundred, a myriad.
+
+The danger that had united the nations into a holy crusade had ended,
+and the crusaders were men again. They were back in the same old world
+with the same old sins and sorrows and selfishnesses, and unnumbered
+new ones. And they had the habit of battle--the gentlest were
+accustomed to slaughter.
+
+It was not the Central Powers alone that had disintegrated. The
+Entente Cordiale was turned into a caldron of toil and trouble. No two
+people in any one nation agreed on the best way to keep the peace.
+Nobody could accept any other body's theories.
+
+Russia, whose collapse had cost the Allies a glimpse of destruction
+and a million lives, was a new plague spot, the center of the world's
+dread. While the people in Russia starved or slew one another their
+terrible missionaries went about the world preaching chaos as the new
+gospel and fanning the always smoldering discontent of labor into a
+prairie fire.
+
+Ships were needed still. Europe must be fed. Hunger was the
+Bolshevists' blood-brother. Unemployment was the third in the grim
+fraternity.
+
+Davidge increased his force daily, adding a hundred men or more to his
+army, choosing mainly from the returning hordes of soldiers.
+
+When Mamise at last had left the hospital she found a new ship
+growing where the _Mamise_ had dwelt. The _Mamise_ was at the
+equipping-dock, all but ready for the sea, about to steam out and take
+on a cargo of food to Poland, the new-old country gathering her three
+selves together under the spell of Paderewski's patriotic fire.
+
+Mamise wanted to go to work again. Her strength was back and she was
+not content to return to crochet-hooks and tennis-racquets. She had
+tasted the joy of machinery, had seen it add to her light muscles a
+giant's strength. She wanted to build a ship all by herself,
+especially the riveting.
+
+Davidge opposed her with all his might. He pointed out that the dream
+of women laboring with men, each at her job, had been postponed, like
+so many other dreams, lost like so many other benefits that mitigated
+war.
+
+The horrors of peace were upon the world. Men were driving the women
+back to the kitchen. There were not jobs enough for all.
+
+But Mamise pleaded to be allowed to work at least till her own ship
+was finished. So Davidge yielded to quiet her. She put back into her
+overalls and wielded a monkey-wrench in the engine-room. She took
+flying trips on the lofty cranes.
+
+One afternoon when the whistle blew she remained aloft alone to revel
+in the wonder view of the world, the wide and gleaming river, the
+peaceful hills, the so-called handiwork of God, and everywhere the
+pitiful beauty of man's efforts to work out his destiny and enslave
+the forces.
+
+Human power was not the least of these forces. Ingenious men had
+learned how to use not only wind currents, waterfalls, and lightning
+and the heat stored up in coal, but to use also the power stored up in
+the muscles of their more slow-brained fellows. And these forces broke
+loose at times with the ruinous effect of tornadoes, floods, and
+thunderbolts.
+
+The laborers needed merciful and intelligent handling, and the better
+they were the better their work. It was hard to say what was heresy
+and what was wisdom, what was oppression and what was helpful
+discipline. Whichever way one turned, there was misunderstanding,
+protest, revolt.
+
+Mamise thought that everybody ought to be happy and love everybody
+else. She thought that it ought to be joy enough to go on working in
+that splendid shop and about the flock of ships on the ways.
+
+And yet people would insist on being miserable. She, the priestess of
+unalloyed rapture, also sighed.
+
+Hearing a step on the crane, she was startled. After all, she was only
+a woman, alone up here, and help could never reach her if any one
+threatened her. She looked over the edge.
+
+There came the man who most of all threatened her--Davidge. He
+endangered her future most of all, whether he married her or deserted
+her. He evidently had no intention of marrying her, for she had given
+him chances enough and hints enough.
+
+He had a telegram in his hand and apologized for following her.
+
+"I didn't know but it might be bad news."
+
+"There's nobody to send me bad news except you and Abbie." She opened
+the telegram. It was an invitation from Polly to come back to sanity
+and a big dance at the Hotel Washington. She smiled. "I wonder if I'll
+ever dance again."
+
+Davidge was tired from the climb. He dropped to the seat occupied by
+the chauffeur of the crane. He rose at once with an apology and
+offered his place to Mamise.
+
+She shook her head, then gave a start:
+
+"Great Heavens! that reminds me! That seat of yours I took on the
+train from New York. I've never paid for it."
+
+"Oh, for the Lord's sake--"
+
+"I'm going to pay it. That's where all the trouble started. How much
+was it?"
+
+"I don't remember."
+
+"About two dollars now."
+
+"Exactly one then."
+
+She drove her hand down into the pocket of her breeches and dragged up
+a fistful of small money.
+
+"To-day was pay-day. Here's your dollar."
+
+"Want a receipt?"
+
+"Sure, Mike. I couldn't trust you."
+
+An odd look crossed his face. He did not play easily, but he tried:
+
+"I can't give you a receipt now, because everybody is looking."
+
+"Do you mean that you had an idea of kissing me?" she gasped.
+
+"Yep."
+
+"You reckless devil! Do you think that a plutocrat can kiss every poor
+goil in the shop?"
+
+"You're the only one here."
+
+"Well, then, do you think you'll take advantage of my womanly
+helplessness?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Never! Overalls is royal raiment when wore for voitue's sake. You'll
+never kiss me till you put a wedding-ring on me finger."
+
+He looked away, sobered and troubled.
+
+She stared at him. "Good Heavens! Can't you take a hint?"
+
+"Not that one."
+
+"Then I insist on your marrying me. You have compromised me
+hopelessly. Everybody says I am working here just to be near you, and
+that's a fact."
+
+He was a caricature of mental and physical awkwardness.
+
+She gasped: "And still he doesn't answer me! Must I get on my knees to
+you?"
+
+She dropped on her knees, a blue denim angel on a cloud, praying
+higher.
+
+He stormed: "For Heaven's sake, get up! Somebody will see you."
+
+She did not budge. "I'll not rise from my knees till you promise to
+marry me."
+
+He started to escape, moved toward the steps. She seized his knees and
+moaned:
+
+"Oh, pity me! pity me!"
+
+He was excruciated with her burlesque, tried to drag her to her feet,
+but he had only one hand and he could not manage her.
+
+"Please get up. I can't make you. I've only one arm."
+
+"Let's see if it fits." She rose and, holding his helpless hand,
+whirled round into his arm. "Perfect!" Then she stood there and called
+from her eyrie to the sea-gulls that haunted the river, "In the
+presence of witnesses this man has taken me for his affianced
+fiancée."
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+They had a wedding in the village church. Abbie was matron of honor
+and gave her sister away. Her children were very dressed up and
+highly uncomfortable. Abbie drew Mamise aside after the signing of the
+book.
+
+"Oh, thank Gawd you're marrit at last, Mamise! You've been such a
+worrit to me. I hope you'll be as happy as poor Jake and me was. If he
+only hadn't 'a' had to gave his life for you, you wouldn't 'a' been.
+But he's watchin' you from up there and-- Oh dear! Oh dear!"
+
+Jake was already a tradition of increasing beauty. So may we all of us
+be!
+
+Mamise insisted on dragging Davidge away from the shipyard for a brief
+honeymoon.
+
+"You're such a great executive, they'll never miss you. But I shall. I
+decline to take my honeymoon or live my married life alone."
+
+They went up to Washington for a while of shopping. The city was
+already reverting to type. The heart had gone out of the stay-at-home
+war-workers and the tide was on the ebb save for a new population of
+returned soldiers, innumerably marked with the proofs of sacrifice,
+not only by their service chevrons, their wound stripes, but also by
+the parts of their brave bodies that they had left in France.
+
+They were shy and afraid of themselves and of the world, and
+especially of their women. But, as Adelaide wrote of the new task of
+rehabilitation, "a merciful Providence sees to it that we become, in
+time, used to anything. If we had all been born with one arm or one
+leg our lives and loves would have gone on just the same."
+
+To many another woman, as to Mamise, was given the privilege of adding
+herself to her wounded lover to complete him.
+
+Polly Widdicombe, seeing Mamise and Davidge dancing together, smiled
+through her tears, almost envying her her husband. Davidge danced as
+well with one arm as with two, but Mamise, as she clasped that blunt
+shoulder and that pocketed sleeve, was given the final touch of
+rapture made perfect with regret: she had the aching pride of a
+soldier's sweetheart, for she could say:
+
+"I am his right arm."
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cup of Fury, by Rupert Hughes
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30351 ***