The Gay Old Dog
[1917]


Those of you who have dwelt--or even lingered--in Chicago,
Illinois, are familiar with the region known as the Loop. For
those others of you to whom Chicago is a transfer point between
New York and California there is presented this brief
explanation:

The Loop is a clamorous, smoke-infested district embraced by the
iron arms of the elevated tracks. In a city boasting fewer
millions, it would be known familiarly as downtown. From
Congress to Lake Street, from Wabash almost to the river, those
thunderous tracks make a complete circle, or loop. Within it lie
the retail shops, the commercial hotels, the theaters, the
restaurants. It is the Fifth Avenue and the Broadway of Chicago.

And he who frequents it by night in search of amusement and cheer
is known, vulgarly, as a Loop-hound.

Jo Hertz was a Loop-hound. On the occasion of those sparse first
nights granted the metropolis of the Middle West he was always
present, third row, aisle, left. When a new Loop cafe' was
opened, Jo's table always commanded an unobstructed view of
anything worth viewing. On entering he was wont to say, "Hello,
Gus," with careless cordiality to the headwaiter, the while his
eye roved expertly from table to table as he removed his gloves.
He ordered things under glass, so that his table, at midnight or
thereabouts, resembled a hotbed that favors the bell system. The
waiters fought for him. He was the kind of man who mixes his own
salad dressing. He liked to call for a bowl, some cracked ice,
lemon, garlic, paprika, salt, pepper, vinegar, and oil and make a
rite of it. People at near-by tables would lay down their knives
and forks to watch, fascinated. The secret of it seemed to lie
in using all the oil in sight and calling for more.

That was Jo--a plump and lonely bachelor of fifty. A plethoric,
roving- eyed, and kindly man, clutching vainly at the garments of
a youth that had long slipped past him. Jo Hertz, in one of
those pinch-waist suits and a belted coat and a little green hat,
walking up Michigan Avenue of a bright winter's afternoon, trying
to take the curb with a jaunty youthfulness against which every
one of his fat-encased muscles rebelled, was a sight for mirth or
pity, depending on one's vision.

The gay-dog business was a late phase in the life of Jo Hertz.
He had been a quite different sort of canine. The staid and
harassed brother of three unwed and selfish sisters is an
underdog.

At twenty-seven Jo had been the dutiful, hard-working son (in the
wholesale harness business) of a widowed and gummidging mother,
who called him Joey. Now and then a double wrinkle would appear
between Jo's eyes--a wrinkle that had no business there at
twenty-seven. Then Jo's mother died, leaving him handicapped by
a deathbed promise, the three sisters, and a
three-story-and-basement house on Calumet Avenue. Jo's wrinkle
became a fixture.

"Joey," his mother had said, in her high, thin voice, "take
care of the girls."

"I will, Ma," Jo had choked.

"Joey," and the voice was weaker, "promise me you won't marry
till the girls are all provided for." Then as Jo had hesitated,
appalled: "Joey, it's my dying wish. Promise!"

"I promise, Ma," he had said.

Whereupon his mother had died, comfortably, leaving him with a
completely ruined life.

They were not bad-looking girls, and they had a certain style,
too. That is, Stell and Eva had. Carrie, the middle one, taught
school over on the West Side. In those days it took her almost
two hours each way. She said the kind of costume she required
should have been corrugated steel. But all three knew what was
being worn, and they wore it--or fairly faithful copies of it.
Eva, the housekeeping sister, had a needle knack. She could skim
the State Street windows and come away with a mental photograph
of every separate tuck, hem, yoke, and ribbon. Heads of
departments showed her the things they kept in drawers, and she
went home and reproduced them with the aid of a seamstress by the
day. Stell, the youngest, was the beauty. They called her Babe.

Twenty-three years ago one's sisters did not strain at the
household leash, nor crave a career. Carrie taught school, and
hated it. Eva kept house expertly and complainingly. Babe's
profession was being the family beauty, and it took all her spare
time. Eva always let her sleep until ten.

This was Jo's household, and he was the nominal head of it. But
it was an empty title. The three women dominated his life. They
weren't con- sciously selfish. If you had called them cruel they
would have put you down as mad. When you are the lone brother of
three sisters, it means that you must constantly be calling for,
escorting, or dropping one of them somewhere. Most men of Jo's
age were standing before their mirror of a Saturday night,
whistling blithely and abstractedly while they discarded a blue
polka-dot for a maroon tie, whipped off the maroon for a
shot-silk and at the last moment decided against the shot-silk in
favor of a plain black-and-white because she had once said she
preferred quiet ties. Jo, when he should have been preening his
feathers for conquest, was saying:

"Well, my God, I AM hurrying! Give a man time, can't you? I
just got home. You girls been laying around the house all day.
No wonder you're ready."

He took a certain pride in seeing his sisters well dressed, at a
time when he should have been reveling in fancy waistcoats and
brilliant-hued socks, according to the style of that day and the
inalienable right of any unwed male under thirty, in any day. On
those rare occasions when his business necessitated an
out-of-town trip, he would spend half a day floundering about the
shops selecting handkerchiefs, or stockings, or feathers, or
gloves for the girls. They always turned out to be the wrong
kind, judging by their reception.

From Carrie, "What in the world do I want of long white
gloves!"

"I thought you didn't have any," Jo would say.

"I haven't. I never wear evening clothes."

Jo would pass a futile hand over the top of his head, as was his
way when disturbed. "I just thought you'd like them. I thought
every girl liked long white gloves. Just," feebly, "just
to--to have."

"Oh, for pity's sake!"

And from Eva or Babe, "I've GOT silk stockings, Jo." Or, "You
brought me handkerchiefs the last time."

There was something selfish in his giving, as there always is in
any gift freely and joyfully made. They never suspected the
exquisite pleasure it gave him to select these things, these
fine, soft, silken things. There were many things about this
slow-going, amiable brother of theirs that they never suspected.
If you had told them he was a dreamer of dreams, for example,
they would have been amused. Sometimes, dead-tired by nine
o'clock after a hard day downtown, he would doze over the evening
paper. At intervals he would wake, red-eyed, to a snatch of
conversation such as, "Yes, but if you get a blue you can wear
it anywhere. It's dressy, and at the same time it's quiet,
too." Eva, the expert, wrestling with Carrie over the problem
of the new spring dress. They never guessed that the com-
monplace man in the frayed old smoking jacket had banished them
all from the room long ago; had banished himself, for that
matter. In his place was a tall, debonair, and rather
dangerously handsome man to whom six o'clock spelled evening
clothes. The kind of man who can lean up against a mantel, or
propose a toast, or give an order to a manservant, or whisper a
gallant speech in a lady's ear with equal ease. The shabby old
house on Calumet Avenue was transformed into a brocaded and
chandeliered rendezvous for the brilliance of the city. Beauty
was here, and wit. But none so beautiful and witty as She.
Mrs.--er--Jo Hertz. There was wine, of course; but no vulgar
display. There was music; the soft sheen of satin; laughter.
And he, the gracious, tactful host, king of his own domain----

"Jo, for heaven's sake, if you're going to snore, go to bed!"

"Why--did I fall asleep?"

"You haven't been doing anything else all evening. A person
would think you were fifty instead of thirty."

And Jo Hertz was again just the dull, gray, commonplace brother
of three well-meaning sisters.

Babe used to say petulantly, "Jo, why don't you ever bring home
any of your men friends? A girl might as well not have any
brother, all the good you do."

Jo, conscience-stricken, did his best to make amends. But a man
who has been petticoat-ridden for years loses the knack, somehow,
of comradeship with men.

One Sunday in May Jo came home from a late-Sunday-afternoon walk
to find company for supper. Carrie often had in one of her
schoolteacher friends, or Babe one of her frivolous intimates, or
even Eva a staid guest of the old-girl type. There was always a
Sunday-night supper of potato salad, and cold meat, and coffee,
and perhaps a fresh cake. Jo rather enjoyed it, being a
hospitable soul. But he regarded the guests with the undazzled
eyes of a man to whom they were just so many petticoats, timid of
the night streets and requiring escort home. If you had
suggested to him that some of his sisters' popularity was due to
his own presence, or if you had hinted that the more kittenish of
these visitors were probably making eyes at him, he would have
stared in amazement and unbelief.

This Sunday night it turned out to be one of Carrie's friends.

"Emily," said Carrie, "this is my brother, Jo."

Jo had learned what to expect in Carrie's friends. Drab-looking
women in the late thirties, whose facial lines all slanted
downward.

"Happy to meet you," said Jo, and looked down at a different
sort altogether. A most surprisingly different sort, for one of
Carrie's friends. This Emily person was very small, and fluffy,
and blue-eyed, and crinkly looking. The corners of her mouth when
she smiled, and her eyes when she looked up at you, and her hair,
which was brown, but had the miraculous effect, somehow, of
looking golden.

Jo shook hands with her. Her hand was incredibly small, and
soft, so that you were afraid of crushing it, until you
discovered she had a firm little grip all her own. It surprised
and amused you, that grip, as does a baby's unexpected clutch on
your patronizing forefinger. As Jo felt it in his own big clasp,
the strangest thing happened to him. Something inside Jo Hertz
stopped working for a moment, then lurched sickeningly, then
thumped like mad. It was his heart. He stood staring down at
her, and she up at him, until the others laughed. Then their
hands fell apart, lingeringly.

"Are you a schoolteacher, Emily?" he said.

"Kindergarten. It's my first year. And don't call me Emily,
please."

"Why not? It's your name. I think it's the prettiest name in
the world." Which he hadn't meant to say at all. In fact, he
was perfectly aghast to find himself saying it. But he meant it.

At supper he passed her things, and stared, until everybody
laughed again, and Eva said acidly, "Why don't you feed her?"

It wasn't that Emily had an air of helplessness. She just made
him feel he wanted her to be helpless, so that he could help her.

Jo took her home, and from that Sunday night he began to strain
at the leash. He took his sisters out, dutifully, but he would
suggest, with a carelessness that deceived no one, "Don't you
want one of your girl friends to come along? That little
What's-her-name-Emily, or something. So long's I've got three of
you, I might as well have a full squad."

For a long time he didn't know what was the matter with him. He
only knew he was miserable, and yet happy. Sometimes his heart
seemed to ache with an actual physical ache. He realized that he
wanted to do things for Emily. He wanted to buy things for
Emily--useless, pretty, expensive things that he couldn't afford.

He wanted to buy everything that Emily needed, and everything
that Emily desired. He wanted to marry Emily. That was it. He
discovered that one day, with a shock, in the midst of a
transaction in the harness business. He stared at the man with
whom he was dealing until that startled person grew
uncomfortable. "What's the matter, Hertz?" "Matter?" "You
look as if you'd seen a ghost or found a gold mine. I don't know
which." "Gold mine," said Jo. And then, "No. Ghost." For
he remembered that high, thin voice, and his promise. And the
harness business was slithering downhill with dreadful rapidity,
as the automobile business began its amazing climb. Jo tried to
stop it. But he was not that kind of businessman. It never
occurred to him to jump out of the down-going vehicle and catch
the up-going one. He stayed on, vainly applying brakes that
refused to work. "You know, Emily, I couldn't support two
households now. Not the way things are. But if you'll wait. If
you'll only wait. The girls might--that is, Babe and Carrie--"

She was a sensible little thing, Emily. "Of course I'll wait.
But we mustn't just sit back and let the years go by. We've got
to help."

She went about it as if she were already a little matchmaking
matron. She corralled all the men she had ever known and
introduced them to Babe, Carrie, and Eva separately, in pairs,
and en masse. She got up picnics. She stayed home while Jo took
the three about. When she was present she tried to look as plain
and obscure as possible, so that the sisters should show up to
advantage. She schemed, and planned, and contrived, and hoped;
and smiled into Jo's despairing eyes.

And three years went by. Three precious years. Carrie still
taught school, and hated it. Eva kept house more and more
complainingly as prices advanced and allowance retreated. Stell
was still Babe, the family beauty. Emily's hair, somehow, lost
its glint and began to look just plain brown. Her crinkliness
began to iron out.

"Now, look here!" Jo argued, desperately, one night. "We
could be happy, anyway. There's plenty of room at the house.
Lots of people begin that way. Of course, I couldn't give you
all I'd like to, at first. But maybe, after a while--" No
dreams of salons, and brocade, and velvet-footed servitors, and
satin damask now. Just two rooms, all their own, all alone, and
Emily to work for. That was his dream. But it seemed less
possible than that other absurd one had been.

Emily was as practical a little thing as she looked fluffy. She
knew women. Especially did she know Eva, and Carrie, and Babe.
She tried to imagine herself taking the household affairs and the
housekeeping pocket- book out of Eva's expert hands. So then she
tried to picture herself allowing the reins of Jo's house to
remain in Eva's hands. And everything feminine and normal in her
rebelled. Emily knew she'd want to put away her own freshly
laundered linen, and smooth it, and pat it. She was that kind of
woman. She knew she'd want to do her own delightful haggling
with butcher and grocer. She knew she'd want to muss Jo's hair,
and sit on his knee, and even quarrel with him, if necessary,
without the awareness of three ever-present pairs of maiden eyes
and ears.

"No! No! We'd only be miserable. I know. Even if they didn't
object. And they would, Jo. Wouldn't they?"

His silence was miserable assent. Then, "But you do love me.
don't you, Emily?"

"I do, Jo. I love you--and love you--and love you. But, Jo,
I--can't."

"I know it, dear. I knew it all the time, really. I just
thought, maybe, somehow----"

The two sat staring for a moment into space, their hands clasped.

Then they both shut their eyes with a little shudder, as though
what they saw was terrible to look upon. Emily's hand, the tiny
hand that was so unexpectedly firm, tightened its hold on his,
and his crushed the absurd fingers until she winced with pain.

That was the beginning of the end, and they knew it.

Emily wasn't the kind of girl who would be left to pine. There
are too many Jos in the world whose hearts are prone to lurch and
then thump at the feel of a soft, fluttering, incredibly small
hand in their grip. One year later Emily was married to a young
man whose father owned a large, pie- shaped slice of the
prosperous state of Michigan.

That being safely accomplished, there was something grimly
humorous in the trend taken by affairs in the old house on
Calumet. For Eva married. Married well, too, though he was a
great deal older than she. She went off in a hat she had copied
from a French model at Field's, and a suit she had contrived with
a home dressmaker, aided by pressing on the part of the little
tailor in the basement over on Thirty-first Street. It was the
last of that, though. The next time they saw her, she had on a
hat that even she would have despaired of copying, and a suit
that sort of melted into your gaze. She moved to the North Side
(trust Eva for that), and Babe assumed the management of the
household on Calumet Avenue. It was rather a pinched little
household now, for the harness business shrank and shrank.

"I don't see how you can expect me to keep house decently on
this!" Babe would say contemptuously. Babe's nose, always a
little inclined to sharpness, had whittled down to a point of
late. "If you knew what Ben gives Eva."

"It's the best I can do, Sis. Business is something rotten."

"Ben says if you had the least bit of----" Ben was Eva's
husband, and quotable, as are all successful men.

"I don't care what Ben says," shouted Jo, goaded into rage.
"I'm sick of your everlasting Ben. Go and get a Ben of your
own, why don't you, if you're so stuck on the way he does
things."

And Babe did. She made a last desperate drive, aided by Eva, and
she captured a rather surprised young man in the brokerage way,
who had made up his mind not to marry for years and years. Eva
wanted to give her her wedding things, but at that Jo broke into
sudden rebellion.

"No, sir! No Ben is going to buy my sister's wedding clothes,
understand? I guess I'm not broke--yet. I'll furnish the money
for her things, and there'll be enough of them, too." Babe had
as useless a trousseau, and as filled with extravagant pink-and-
blue and lacy and frilly things, as any daughter of doting
parents. Jo seemed to find a grim pleasure in providing them.
But it left him pretty well pinched. After Babe's marriage (she
insisted that they call her Estelle now) Jo sold the house on
Calumet. He and Carrie took one of those little flats that were
springing up, seemingly overnight, all through Chicago's South
Side.

There was nothing domestic about Carrie. She had given up
teaching two years before, and had gone into social-service work
on the West Side. She had what is known as a legal mind--hard,
clear, orderly--and she made a great success of it. Her dream
was to live at the Settlement House and give all her time to the
work. Upon the little household she bestowed a certain amount of
grim, capable attention. It was the same kind of attention she
would have given a piece of machinery whose oiling and running
had been entrusted to her care. She hated it, and didn't
hesitate to say so.

Jo took to prowling about department-store basements, and
household goods sections. He was always sending home a bargain
in a ham, or a sack of potatoes, or fifty pounds of sugar, or a
window clamp, or a new kind of paring knife. He was forever
doing odd jobs that the janitor should have done. It was the
domestic in him claiming its own.

Then, one night, Carrie came home with a dull glow in her
leathery cheeks, and her eyes alight with resolve. They had what
she called a plain talk.

"Listen, Jo. They've offered me the job of first assistant
resident worker. And I'm going to take it. Take it! I know
fifty other girls who'd give their ears for it. I go in next
month."

They were at dinner. Jo looked up from his plate, dully. Then
he glanced around the little dining room, with its ugly tan walls
and its heavy, dark furniture (the Calumet Avenue pieces fitted
cumbersomely into the five-room flat).

"Away? Away from here, you mean--to live?"

Carrie laid down her fork. "Well, really, Jo! After all that
explanation."

"But to go over there to live! Why, that neighborhood's full of
dirt, and disease, and crime, and the Lord knows what all. I
can't let you do that, Carrie."

Carrie's chin came up. She laughed a short little laugh. "Let
me! That's eighteenth-century talk, Jo. My life's my own to
live. I'm going."

And she went.

Jo stayed on in the apartment until the lease was up. Then he
sold what furniture he could, stored or gave away the rest, and
took a room on Michigan Avenue in one of the old stone mansions
whose decayed splendor was being put to such purpose.

Jo Hertz was his own master. Free to marry. Free to come and
go. And he found he didn't even think of marrying. He didn't
even want to come or go, particularly. A rather frumpy old
bachelor, with thinning hair and a thickening neck.

Every Thursday evening he took dinner at Eva's, and on Sunday
noon at Stell's. He tucked his napkin under his chin and openly
enjoyed the homemade soup and the well-cooked meats. After
dinner he tried to talk business with Eva's husband, or Stell's.
His business talks were the old- fashioned kind, beginning:

"Well, now, looka here. Take, f'rinstance, your raw hides and
leathers."

But Ben and George didn't want to take, f'rinstance, your raw
hides and leathers. They wanted, when they took anything at all,
to take golf, or politics, or stocks. They were the modern type
of businessman who prefers to leave his work out of his play.
Business, with them, was a profession-- a finely graded and
balanced thing, differing from Jo's clumsy, down- hill style as
completely as does the method of a great criminal detective
differ from that of a village constable. They would listen,
restively, and say, "Uh-uh," at intervals, and at the first
chance they would sort of fade out of the room, with a meaning
glance at their wives. Eva had two children now. Girls. They
treated Uncle Jo with good-natured tolerance. Stell had no
children. Uncle Jo degenerated, by almost imperceptible degrees,
from the position of honored guest, who is served with white
meat, to that of one who is content with a leg and one of those
obscure and bony sections which, after much turning with a
bewildered and investigating knife and fork, leave one baffled
and unsatisfied.

Eva and Stell got together and decided that Jo ought to marry.

"It isn't natural," Eva told him. "I never saw a man who took
so little interest in women."

"Me!" protested Jo, almost shyly. "Women!"

"Yes. Of course. You act like a frightened schoolboy."

So they had in for dinner certain friends and acquaintances of
fitting age. They spoke of them as "splendid girls." Between
thirty-six and forty. They talked awfully well, in a firm, clear
way, about civics, and classes, and politics, and economics, and
boards. They rather terrified Jo. He didn't understand much
that they talked about, and he felt humbly inferior, and yet a
little resentful, as if something had passed him by. He escorted
them home, dutifully, though they told him not to bother, and
they evidently meant it. They seemed capable not only of going
home quite unattended but of delivering a pointed lecture to any
highwayman or brawler who might molest them.

The following Thursday Eva would say, "How did you like her,
Jo?"

"Like who?" Joe would spar feebly.

"Miss Matthews."

"Who's she?"

"Now, don't be funny, Jo. You know very well I mean the girl who
was here for dinner. The one who talked so well on the
emigration question."

"Oh, her! Why, I liked her all right. Seems to be a smart
woman."

"Smart! She's a perfectly splendid girl."

"Sure," Jo would agree cheerfully.

"But didn't you like her?"

"I can't say I did, Eve. And I can't say I didn't. She made me
think a lot of a teacher I had in the fifth reader. Name of
Himes. As I recall her, she must have been a fine woman. But I
never thought of Himes as a woman at all. She was just
Teacher."

"You make me tired," snapped Eva impatiently. "A man of your
age. You don't expect to marry a girl, do you? A child!"

"I don't expect to marry anybody," Jo had answered.

And that was the truth, lonely though he often was.

The following spring Eva moved to Winnetka. Anyone who got the
meaning of the Loop knows the significance of a move to a North
Shore suburb, and a house. Eva's daughter, Ethel, was growing
up, and her mother had an eye on society.

That did away with Jo's Thursday dinners. Then Stell's husband
bought a car. They went out into the country every Sunday.
Stell said it was getting so that maids objected to Sunday
dinners, anyway. Besides, they were unhealthful, old-fashioned
things. They always meant to ask Jo to come along, but by the
time their friends were placed, and the lunch, and the boxes, and
sweaters, and George's camera, and everything, there seemed to be
no room for a man of Jo's bulk. So that eliminated the Sunday
dinners.

"Just drop in any time during the week," Stell said, "for
dinner. Except Wednesday--that's our bridge night--and Saturday.

And, of course, Thursday. Cook is out that night. Don't wait for
me to phone."

And so Jo drifted into that sad-eyed, dyspeptic family made up of
those you see dining in second-rate restaurants, their paper
propped up against the bowl of oyster crackers, munching solemnly
and with indifference to the stare of the passer-by surveying
them through the brazen plate-glass window.

And then came the war. The war that spelled death and
destruction to millions. The war that brought a fortune to Jo
Hertz, and transformed him, overnight, from a baggy-kneed old
bachelor whose business was a failure to a prosperous
manufacturer whose only trouble was the shortage in hides for the
making of his product. Leather! The armies of Europe called for
it. Harnesses! More harnesses! Straps! Millions of straps.
More! More!

The musty old harness business over on Lake Street was magically
changed from a dust-covered, dead-alive concern to an orderly
hive that hummed and glittered with success. Orders poured in.
Jo Hertz had inside information on the war. He knew about troops
and horses. He talked with French and English and Italian buyers
commissioned by their countries to get American-made supplies.
And now, when he said to Ben or George, "Take, f'rinstance, your
raw hides and leathers," they listened with respectful
attention.

And then began the gay-dog business in the life of Jo Hertz. He
developed into a Loop-hound, ever keen on the scent of fresh
pleasure. That side of Jo Hertz which had been repressed and
crushed and ignored began to bloom, unhealthily. At first he
spent money on his rather contemptuous nieces. He sent them
gorgeous furs, and watch bracelets, and bags. He took two
expensive rooms at a downtown hotel, and there was something more
tear-compelling than grotesque about the way he gloated over the
luxury of a separate ice-water tap in the bathroom. He explained
it.

"Just turn it on. Any hour of the day or night. Ice water!"

He bought a car. Naturally. A glittering affair; in color a
bright blue, with pale-blue leather straps and a great deal of
gold fittings, and special tires. Eva said it was the kind of
thing a chorus girl would use, rather than an elderly
businessman. You saw him driving about in it, red-faced and
rather awkward at the wheel. You saw him, too, in the Pompeian
Room at the Congress Hotel of a Saturday afternoon when
roving-eyed matrons in mink coats are wont to congregate to sip
pale-amber drinks. Actors grew to recognize the semibald head and
the shining, round, good- natured face looming out at them from
the dim well of the theater, and sometimes, in a musical show,
they directed a quip at him, and he liked it. He could pick out
the critics as they came down the aisle, and even had a nodding
acquaintance with two of them.

"Kelly, of the Herald," he would say carelessly. "Bean. of
the Trib. They're all afraid of him."

So he frolicked, ponderously. In New York he might have been
called a Man About Town.

And he was lonesome. He was very lonesome. So he searched about
in his mind and brought from the dim past the memory of the
luxuriously furnished establishment of which he used to dream in
the evenings when he dozed over his paper in the old house on
Calumet. So he rented an apartment, many-roomed and expensive,
with a manservant in charge, and furnished it in styles and
periods ranging through all the Louis. The living room was
mostly rose color. It was like an unhealthy and bloated boudoir.
And yet there was nothing sybaritic or uncleanly in the sight of
this paunchy, middle-aged man sinking into the rosy-cushioned
luxury of his ridiculous home. It was a frank and naive
indulgence of long-starved senses, and there was in it a great
resemblance to the rolling-eyed ecstasy of a schoolboy smacking
his lips over an all-day sucker.

The war went on, and on, and on. And the money continued to roll
in-- a flood of it. Then, one afternoon, Eva, in town on
shopping bent, entered a small, exclusive, and expensive shop on
Michigan Avenue. Eva's weakness was hats. She was seeking a hat
now. She described what she sought with a languid conciseness,
and stood looking about her after the saleswoman had vanished in
quest of it. The room was becomingly rose-illumined and somewhat
dim, so that some minutes had passed before she realized that a
man seated on a raspberry brocade settee not five feet away-- a
man with a walking stick, and yellow gloves, and tan spats, and a
check suit--was her brother Jo. From him Eva's wild-eyed glance
leaped to the woman who was trying on hats before one of the many
long mirrors. She was seated, and a saleswoman was exclaiming
discreetly at her elbow.

Eva turned sharply and encountered her own saleswoman returning
hat-laden. "Not today," she gasped. "I'm feeling ill.
Suddenly." And almost ran from the room.

That evening she told Stell, relating her news in that telephone
pidgin English devised by every family of married sisters as
protection against the neighbors. Translated, it ran thus:

"He looked straight at me. My dear, I thought I'd die! But at
least he had sense enough not to speak. She was one of those
limp, willowy creatures with the greediest eyes that she tried to
keep softened to a baby stare, and couldn't, she was so crazy to
get her hands on those hats. I saw it all in one awful minute.
You know the way I do. I suppose some people would call her
pretty. I don't. And her color. Well! And the most expensive-
looking hats. Not one of them under seventy-five. Isn't it
disgusting! At his age! Suppose Ethel had been with me!"

The next time it was Stell who saw them. In a restaurant. She
said it spoiled her evening. And the third time it was Ethel.
She was one of the guests at a theater party given by Nicky
Overton II. The North Shore Overtons. Lake Forest. They came
in late, and occupied the entire third row at the opening
performance of Believe Me! And Ethel was Nicky's partner. She
was glowing like a rose. When the lights went up after the first
act Ethel saw that her uncle Jo was seated just ahead of her with
what she afterward described as a blonde. Then her uncle had
turned around, and seeing her, had been surprised into a smile
that spread genially all over his plump and rubicund face. Then
he had turned to face forward again, quickly.

"Who's the old bird?" Nicky had asked. Ethel had pretended not
to hear, so he had asked again.

"My uncle," Ethel answered, and flushed all over her delicate
face, and down to her throat. Nicky had looked at the blonde,
and his eyebrows had gone up ever so slightly.

It spoiled Ethel's evening. More than that, as she told her
mother of it later, weeping, she declared it had spoiled her
life.

Eva talked it over with her husband in that intimate hour that
precedes bedtime. She gesticulated heatedly with her hairbrush.

"It's disgusting, that's what it is. Perfectly disgusting.
There's no fool like an old fool. Imagine! A creature like
that. At his time of life."

"Well, I don't know," Ben said, and even grinned a little. "I
suppose a boy's got to sow his wild oats sometime."

"Don't be any more vulgar than you can help," Eva retorted.
"And I think you know, as well as I, what it means to have that
Overton boy interested in Ethel."

"If he's interested in her," Ben blundered, "I guess the fact
that Ethel's uncle went to the theater with someone who isn't
Ethel's aunt won't cause a shudder to run up and down his frail
young frame, will it?"

"All right," Eva had retorted. "If you're not man enough to
stop it, I'll have to, that's all. I'm going up there with Stell
this week."

They did not notify Jo of their coming. Eva telephoned his
apartment when she knew he would be out, and asked his man if he
expected his master home to dinner that evening. The man had
said yes. Eva arranged to meet Stell in town. They would drive
to Jo's apartment together, and wait for him there.

When she reached the city Eva found turmoil there. The first of
the American troops to be sent to France were leaving. Michigan
Boulevard was a billowing, surging mass: flags, pennants,
banners, crowds. All the elements that make for demonstration.
And over the whole-quiet. No holiday crowd, this. A solid,
determined mass of people waiting patient hours to see the
khaki-clads go by. Three years had brought them to a clear
knowledge of what these boys were going to.

"Isn't it dreadful!" Stell gasped.

"Nicky Overton's too young, thank goodness."

Their car was caught in the jam. When they moved at all, it was
by inches. When at last they reached Jo's apartment they were
flushed, nervous, apprehensive. But he had not yet come in. So
they waited.

No, they were not staying to dinner with their brother, they told
the relieved houseman.

Stell and Eva, sunk in rose-colored cushions, viewed the place
with disgust and some mirth. They rather avoided each other's
eyes.

"Carrie ought to be here," Eva said. They both smiled at the
thought of the austere Carrie in the midst of those rosy
cushions, and hangings, and lamps. Stell rose and began to walk
about restlessly. She picked up a vase and laid it down;
straightened a picture. Eva got up, too, and wandered into the
hall. She stood there a moment, listening. Then she turned and
passed into Jo's bedroom, Stell following. And there you knew Jo
for what he was.

This room was as bare as the other had been ornate. It was Jo,
the clean-minded and simplehearted, in revolt against the cloying
luxury with which he had surrounded himself. The bedroom, of all
rooms in any house, reflects the personality of its occupant.
True, the actual furniture was paneled, cupid-surmounted, and
ridiculous. It had been the fruit of Jo's first orgy of the
senses. But now it stood out in that stark little room with an
air as incongruous and ashamed as that of a pink tarlatan
danseuse who finds herself in a monk's cell. None of those wall
pictures with which bachelor bedrooms are reputed to be hung. No
satin slippers. No scented notes. Two plain-backed military
brushes on the chiffonier (and he so nearly hairless!). A little
orderly stack of books on the table near the bed. Eva fingered
their titles and gave a little gasp. One of them was on
gardening.

"Well, of all things!" exclaimed Stell. A book on the war, by
an Englishman. A detective story of the lurid type that lulls us
to sleep. His shoes ranged in a careful row in the closet, with
a shoe tree in every one of them. There was something speaking
about them. They looked so human. Eva shut the door on them
quickly. Some bottles on the dresser. A jar of pomade. An
ointment such as a man uses who is growing bald and is panic-
stricken too late. An insurance calendar on the wall. Some
rhubarb-and- soda mixture on the shelf in the bathroom, and a
little box of pepsin tablets.

"Eats all kinds of things at all hours of the night," Eva said,
and wandered out into the rose-colored front room again with the
air of one who is chagrined at her failure to find what she has
sought. Stell followed her furtively.

"Where do you suppose he can be?" she demanded. "It's"--she
glanced at her wrist--"why, it's after six!"

And then there was a little click. The two women sat up, tense.
The door opened. Jo came in. He blinked a little. The two
women in the rosy room stood up.

"Why--Eve! Why, Babe! Well! Why didn't you let me know?"

"We were just about to leave. We thought you weren't coming
home."

Jo came in slowly.

"I was in the jam on Michigan, watching the boys go by." He
sat down, heavily. The light from the window fell on him. And
you saw that his eyes were red.

He had found himself one of the thousands in the jam on Michigan
Avenue, as he said. He had a place near the curb, where his big
frame shut off the view of the unfortunates behind him. He
waited with the placid interest of one who has subscribed to all
the funds and societies to which a prosperous, middle-aged
businessman is called upon to subscribe in war-time. Then, just
as he was about to leave, impatient at the delay, the crowd had
cried, with a queer, dramatic, exultant note in its voice, "Here
they come! Here come the boys!"

Just at that moment two little, futile, frenzied fists began to
beat a mad tattoo on Jo Hertz's broad back. Jo tried to turn in
the crowd, all indignant resentment. "Say, looka here!"

The little fists kept up their frantic beating and pushing. And
a voice--a choked, high little voice--cried, "Let me by! I
can't see! You MAN, you! You big fat man! My boy's going by--to
war--and I can't see! Let me by!"

Jo scrooged around, still keeping his place. He looked down.
And upturned to him in agonized appeal was the face of Emily.
They stared at each other for what seemed a long, long time. It
was really only the fraction of a second. Then Jo put one great
arm firmly around Emily's waist and swung her around in front of
him. His great bulk protected her. Emily was clinging to his
hand. She was breathing rapidly, as if she had been running.
Her eyes were straining up the street.

"Why, Emily, how in the world----!"

"I ran away. Fred didn't want me to come. He said it would
excite me too much."

"Fred?"

"My husband. He made me promise to say good-by to Jo at home."

"Jo?"

"Jo's my boy. And he's going to war. So I ran away. I had to
see him. I had to see him go."

She was dry-eyed. Her gaze was straining up the street.

"Why, sure," said Jo. "Of course you want to see him." And
then the crowd gave a great roar. There came over Jo a feeling
of weakness. He was trembling. The boys went marching by.

"There he is," Emily shrilled, above the din. "There he is!
There he is! There he----" And waved a futile little hand. It
wasn't so much a wave as a clutching. A clutching after
something beyond her reach.

"Which one? Which one, Emily?"

"The handsome one. The handsome one." Her voice quavered and
died.

Jo put a steady hand on her shoulder. "Point him out," he
commanded "Show me." And the next instant, "Never mind. I
see him."

Somehow, miraculously, he had picked him from among the hundreds.
Had picked him as surely as his own father might have. It was
Emily's boy. He was marching by, rather stiffly. He was
nineteen, and fun-loving, and he had a girl, and he didn't
particularly want to go to France and--to go to France. But more
than he had hated going, he had hated not to go. So he marched
by, looking straight ahead, his jaw set so that his chin stuck
out just a little. Emily's boy.

Jo looked at him, and his face flushed purple. His eyes, the
hard-boiled eyes of a Loop-hound, took on the look of a sad old
man. And suddenly he was no longer Jo, the sport; old J. Hertz,
the gay dog. He was Jo Hertz, thirty, in love with life, in love
with Emily, and with the stinging blood of young manhood coursing
through his veins.

Another minute and the boy had passed on up the broad street--the
fine, flag-bedecked street--just one of a hundred service hats
bobbing in rhythmic motion like sandy waves lapping a shore and
flowing on.

Then he disappeared altogether.

Emily was clinging to Jo. She was mumbling something, over and
over. "I can't. I can't. Don't ask me to. I can't let him go.

Like that. I can't."

Jo said a queer thing.

"Why, Emily! We wouldn't have him stay home, would we? We
wouldn't want him to do anything different, would we? Not our
boy. I'm glad he enlisted. I'm proud of him. So are you
glad."

Little by little he quieted her. He took her to the car that was
waiting, a worried chauffeur in charge. They said good-by,
awkwardly. Emily's face was a red, swollen mass.

So it was that when Jo entered his own hallway half an hour later
he blinked, dazedly, and when the light from the window fell on
him you saw that his eyes were red.

Eva was not one to beat about the bush. She sat forward in her
chair, clutching her bag rather nervously.

"Now, look here, Jo. Stell and I are here for a reason. We're
here to tell you that this thing's going to stop."

"Thing? Stop?"

"You know very well what I mean. You saw me at the milliner's
that day. And night before last, Ethel. We're all disgusted.
If you must go about with people like that, please have some
sense of decency."

Something gathering in Jo's face should have warned her. But he
was slumped down in his chair in such a huddle, and he looked so
old and fat that she did not heed it. She went on. "You've got
us to consider. Your sisters. And your nieces. Not to speak of
your own----"

But he got to his feet then, shaking, and at what she saw in his
face even Eva faltered and stopped. It wasn't at all the face of
a fat, middle-aged sport. It was a face Jovian, terrible.

"You!" he began, low-voiced, ominous. "You!" He raised a
great fist high. "You two murderers! You didn't consider me,
twenty years ago. You come to me with talk like that. Where's
my boy! You killed him, you two, twenty years ago. And now he
belongs to somebody else. Where's my son that should have gone
marching by today?" He flung his arms out in a great gesture of
longing. The red veins stood out on his forehead. "Where's my
son! Answer me that, you two selfish, miserable women. Where's
my son!" Then, as they huddled together, frightened, wild-eyed.

"Out of my house! Out of my house! Before I hurt you!"

They fled, terrified. The door banged behind them.

Jo stood, shaking, in the center of the room. Then he reached
for a chair, gropingly, and sat down. He passed one moist,
flabby hand over his forehead and it came away wet. The
telephone rang. He sat still. It sounded far away and
unimportant, like something forgotten. But it rang and rang
insistently. Jo liked to answer his telephone when he was at
home.

"Hello!" He knew instantly the voice at the other end.

"That you, Jo?" it said.

"Yes."

"How's my boy?"

"I'm--all right."

"Listen, Jo. The crowd's coming over tonight. I've fixed up a
little poker game for you. Just eight of us."

"I can't come tonight, Gert."

"Can't! Why not?"

"I'm not feeling so good."

"You just said you were all right."

"I AM all right. Just kind of tired."

The voice took on a cooing note. "Is my Joey tired? Then he
shall be all comfy on the sofa, and he doesn't need to play if he
don't want to. No, sir."

Jo stood staring at the black mouthpiece of the telephone. He
was seeing a procession go marching by. Boys, hundreds of boys,
in khaki.

"Hello! Hello!" The voice took on an anxious note. "Are you
there?"

"Yes," wearily.

"Jo, there's something the matter. You're sick. I'm coming
right over."

"No!" "Why not? You sound as if you'd been sleeping. Look
here----"

"Leave me alone!" cried Jo, suddenly, and the receiver clacked
onto the hook. "Leave me alone. Leave me alone." Long after
the connection had been broken.

He stood staring at the instrument with unseeing eyes. Then he
turned and walked into the front room. All the light had gone
out of it. Dusk had come on. All the light had gone out of
everything. The zest had gone out of life. The game was
over--the game he had been playing against loneliness and
disappointment. And he was just a tired old man. A lonely,
tired old man in a ridiculous rose-colored room that had grown,
all of a sudden, drab {sic}