WINTER
DREAMS
SOME of the caddies were poor as
sin and lived in one-room houses
with a neurasthenic cow in the
front yard, but Dexter Green's father
owned the second best
grocery-store in Black Bear the best one was
"The Hub," patronized
by the wealthy people from Sherry Island
and Dexter caddied only for
pocket-money.
In the fall when the days became
crisp and gray, and the long
Minnesota winter shut down like
the white lid of a box, Dexter's skis
moved over the snow that hid the
fairways of the golf course. At
these times the country gave him
a feeling of profound melancholy
it offended him that the links
should lie in enforced fallowness,
haunted by ragged sparrows for
the long season. It was dreary, too,
that on the tees where the gay colors
fluttered in summer there were
now only the desolate sand-boxes
knee-deep in crusted ice. When he
crossed the hills the wind blew
cold as misery, and if the sun was out
he tramped with his eyes
squinted up against the hard dimensionless
glare.
In April the winter ceased
abruptly. The snow ran down into
Black Bear Lake scarcely
tarrying for the early golfers to brave the
season with red and black balls.
Without elation, without an interval
of moist glory, the cold was
gone.
Dexter knew that there was
something dismal about this Northern
spring, just as he knew there
was something gorgeous -about the fall.
Fall made him clinch his hands
and tremble and repeat idiotic sen-
tences to himself, and make
brisk abrupt gestures of command to
imaginary audiences and armies.
October filled him with hope which
November raised to a sort of
ecstatic triumph, and in this mood the
fleeting brilliant impressions
of the summer at Sherry feland were
ready grist to his mill. He
became a golf champion and defeated
Mr. T. A. Hedrick in a
marvellous match played a hundred times
over the fairways of his
imagination, a match each detail of which
he changed about untiringly
sometimes he won with almost laugh-
able ease, sometimes he came up
magnificently from behind. Again,
stepping from a Pierce- Arrow
automobile, like Mr. Mortimer Jones,
he strolled frigidly into the
lounge of the Sherry Island Golf Club
or perhaps, surrounded by an
admiring crowd, he gave an exhibition
of fancy diving from the spring-board
of the club raft. . . . Among
those who watched him in
open-mouthed wonder was Mr. Mortimer
Jones.
And one day it came to pass that
Mr. Jones himself and not his
ghost came up to Dexter with
tears in his eyes and said that Dexter
was the best caddy in the club,
and wouldn't he decide not to
quit if Mr. Jones made it worth
his while, because every other
caddy in the club lost one ball
a hole for him regularly
"No, sir," said Dexter
decisively, "I don't want to caddy any
more." Then, after a pause:
"I'm too old."
"You're not more than
fourteen. Why the devil did you decide just
this morning that you wanted to
quit ? You promised that next week
you'd go over to the state
tournament with me."
"I decided I was too
old."
Dexter handed in his "A
Class" badge, collected what money was
due him from the caddy master,
and walked home to Black Bear
Village.
"The best caddy I ever
saw," shouted Mr. Mortimer Jones
over a drink that afternoon.
"Never lost a ball ! Willing ! Intelligent !
Quiet! Honest! Grateful!"
The little girl who had done
this was eleven beautifully ugly as
little girls are apt to be who
are destined after a few years to be in-
expressibly lovely and bring no
end of misery to a great number of
men. The spark, however, was
perceptible. There was a general un-
godliness in the way her lips
twisted down at the corners when she
smiled, and in the Heaven help
us! in the almost passionate qual-
ity of her eyes. Vitality is
born early in such women. It was utterly
in evidence now, shining through
her thin frame in a sort of glow.
She had come eagerly out on to
the course at nine o'clock with a
white linen nurse and five small
new golf-clubs in a white canvas
bag which the nurse was
carrying. When Dexter first saw her she was
standing by the caddy house,
rather ill at ease and trying to conceal
the fact by engaging her nurse
in an obviously unnatural conversa-
tion graced by startling and irrelevant
grimaces from herself.
"Well, it's certainly a
nice day, Hilda," Dexter heard her say. She
drew down the corners of her
mouth, smiled, and glanced furtively
around, her eyes in transit
falling for an instant on Dexter.
Then to the nurse :
"Well, I guess there aren't
very many people out here this morn-
ing, are there?"
The smile again radiant,
blatantly artificial convincing.
"I don't know what we're
supposed to do now," said the nurse,
looking nowhere in particular.
"Oh, that's all right. I'll
fix it up."
Dexter stood perfectly still,
his mouth slightly ajar. He knew that
if he moved forward a step his
stare would be in her line of vision
if he moved backward he would
lose his full view of her face. For a
moment he had not realized how
young she was. Now he remembered
having seen her several times
the year before in bloomers.
Suddenly, involuntarily, he
laughed, a short abrupt laugh then,
startled by himself, he turned
and began to walk quickly away.
"Boy!"
Dexter stopped.
"Boy "
Beyond question he was
addressed. Not only that, but he was
treated to that absurd smile,
that preposterous smile the memory
of which at least a dozen men
were to carry into middle age.
"Boy, do you know where the
golf teacher is?"
"He's giving a lesson."
"Well, do you know where
the caddy-master is?"
"He isn't here yet this
morning."
"Oh." For a moment
this baffled her. She stood alternately on her
right and left foot.
"We'd like to get a
caddy," said the nurse. "Mrs. Mortimer Jones
sent us out to play golf, and we
don't know how without we get
a caddy."
Here she was stopped by an
ominous glance from Miss Jones, fol-
lowed immediately by the smile.
"There aren't any caddies
here except me," said Dexter to the
nurse, "and I got to stay
here in charge until the caddy-master gets
here."
"Oh."
Miss Jones and her retinue now
withdrew, and at a proper distance
from Dexter became involved in a
heated conversation, which was
concluded by Miss Jones taking
one of the clubs and hitting it on
the ground with violence. For
further emphasis she raised it again
and was about to bring it down
smartly upon the nurse's bosom,
when the nurse seized the club
and twisted it from her hands.
"You damn little mean old
thing I" cried Miss Jones wildly.
Another argument ensued. Realizing
that the elements of the
comedy were implied in the
scene, Dexter several times began to
laugh, but each time restrained
the laugh before it reached audibility.
He could not resist the
monstrous conviction that the little girl was
justified in beating the nurse.
The situation was resolved by
the fortuitous appearance of the
caddy-master, who was appealed
to immediately by the nurse.
"Miss Jones is to have a
little caddy, and this one says he can't
go."
"Mr. McKenna said I was to
wait here till you came," said
Dexter quickly.
"Well, he's here now."
Miss Jones smiled cheerfully at the caddy-
master. Then she dropped her bag
and set off at a haughty mince
toward the first tee.
"Well?" The
caddy-master turned to Dexter. "What you standing
there like a dummy for? Go pick
up the young lady's clubs."
"I don't think I'll go out
to-day," said Dexter.
"You don't "
"I think I'll quit."
The enormity of his decision
frightened him. He was a favorite
caddy, and the thirty dollars a
month he earned through the summer
were not to be made elsewhere
around the lake. But he had received
a strong emotional shock, and
his perturbation required a violent and
immediate outlet.
It is not so simple as that,
either. As so frequently would be the
case in the future, Dexter was
unconsciously dictated to by his
II
Now, of course, the quality and
the seasonability of these winter
dreams varied, but the stuff of
them remained. They persuaded
Dexter several years later to
pass up a business course at the State
university his father,
prospering now, would have paid his way
for the precarious advantage of
attending an older and more famous
university in the East, where he
was bothered by his scanty funds.
But do not get the impression,
because his winter dreams happened
to be concerned at first with
musings on the rich, that there was any-
thing merely snobbish in the
boy. He wanted not association with
glittering things and glittering
people he wanted the glittering
things themselves. Often he
reached out for the best without know-
ing why he wanted it and
sometimes he ran up against the mysterious
denials and prohibitions in
which life indulges. It is with one of those
denials and not with his career
as a whole that this story deals.
He made money. It was rather
amazing. After college he went to
the city from which Black Bear
Lake draws its wealthy patrons.
When he was only twenty-three
and had been there not quite two
years, there were already people
who liked to say : "Now there's a
boy " All about him rich
men's sons were peddling bonds pre-
rariously, or investing
patrimonies precariously, or plodding through
the two dozen volumes of the
"George Washington Commercial
Course," but Dexter borrowed
a thousand dollars on his college
degree and his confident mouth,
and bought a partnership in a
laundry.
It was a small laundry when he
went into it, but Dexter made
a specialty of learning how the
English washed fine woolen golf-
stockings without shrinking
them, and within a year he was catering
to the trade that wore
knickerbockers. Men were insisting that their
Shetland hose and sweaters go to
his laundry, just as they had in-
sisted on a caddy who could find
golf-balls. A little later he was doing
their wives' lingerie as well
and running five branches in different
parts of the city. Before he was
twenty-seven he owned the largest
string of laundries in his section
of the country. It was then that he
sold out and went to New York.
But the part of his story that con-
cerns us goes back to the days
when he was making his first big
success.
When he was twenty-three Mr.
Hart one of the gray-haired men
who like to say "Now
there's a boy" gave him a guest card to the
Sherry Island Golf Club for a
week-end. So he signed his name one
day on the register, and that
afternoon played golf in a foursome
with Mr. Hart and Mr. Sandwood
and Mr. T. A. Hedrick. He did
not consider it necessary to
remark that he had once carried Mr.
Hart's bag over this same links,
and that he knew every trap and
gully with his eyes shut but he
found himself glancing at the four
caddies who trailed them, trying
to catch a gleam or gesture that
would remind him of himself,
that would lessen the gap which lay
between his present and his
past.
It was a curious day, slashed
abruptly with fleeting, familiar im-
pressions. One minute he had the
sense of being a trespasser in the
next he was impressed by the
tremendous superiority he felt toward
Mr. T. A. Hedrick, who was a
bore and not even a good golfer any
more.
Then, because of a ball Mr. Hart
lost near the fifteenth green, an
enormous thing happened. While
they were searching the stiff grasses
of the rough there was a clear
call of "Fore!" from behind a hill in
their rear. And as they all
turned abruptly from their search a bright
new ball sliced abruptly over
the hill and caught Mr. T. A. Hedrick
in the abdomen.
"By Gad!" cried Mr. T.
A. Hedrick, "they" ought to put some of
these crazy women off the
course. It's getting to be outrageous."
A head and a voice came up
together over the hill :
"Do you mind if we go
through?"
"You hit me in the stomach
! " declared Mr. Hedrick wildly.
"Did I?" The girl
approached the group of men. "I'm sorry. I
yelled Tore! "
Her glance fell casually on each
of the men then scanned the
fairway for her ball.
"Did I bounce into the
rough?"
It was impossible to determine
whether this question was ingenuous
or malicious. In a moment,
however, she left no doubt, for as her
partner came up over the hill
she called cheerfully :
"Here I am! I'd have gone
on the green except that I hit some-
thing."
As she took her stance for a
short mashie shot, Dexter looked at
her closely. She wore a blue
gingham dress, rimmed at throat and
shoulders with a white edging
that accentuated her tan. The quality
of exaggeration, of thinness,
which had made her passionate eyes
and down-turning mouth absurd at
eleven, was gone now. She was
arrestingly beautiful. The color
in her cheeks was centred like the
color in a picture it was not a
"high" color, but a sort of fluctuating
and feverish warmth, so shaded
that it seemed at any moment it
would recede and disappear. This
color and the mobility of her mouth
gave a continual impression of
flux, of intense life, of passionate
vitality balanced only partially
by the sad luxury of her eyes.
She swung her mashie impatiently
and without interest, pitching
the ball into a sand-pit on the
other side of the green. With a quick,
insincere smile and a careless
"Thank you ! " she went on after it.
"That Judy Jones ! "
remarked Mr. Hedrick on the next tee, as they
waited some moments for her to
play on ahead. "All she needs is
to be turned up and spanked for
six months and then to be married
off to an old-fashioned cavalry
captain."
"My God, she's good-looking
! " said Mr. Sandwood, who was just
over thirty.
"Good-looking!" cried
Mr. Hedrick contemptuously, "she always
looks as if she wanted to be
kissed ! Turning those big cow-eyes on
every calf in town ! "
It was doubtful if Mr. Hedrick
intended a reference to the ma-
ternal instinct.
"She'd play pretty good
golf if she'd try," said Mr. Sandwood.
"She has no form,"
said Mr. Hedrick solemnly.
"She has a nice
figure," said Mr. Sandwood.
"Better thank the Lord she
doesn't drive a swifter ball," said
Mr. Hart, winking at Dexter.
Later in the afternoon the sun
went down with a riotous swirl of
gold and varying blues and
scarlets, and left the dry, rustling night of
Western summer. Dexter watched
from the veranda of the Golf Club,
watched the even overlap of the
waters in the little wind, silver mo-
lasses under the harvest-moon.
Then the moon held a finger to her
lips and the lake became a clear
pool, pale and quiet. Dexter put on
his bathing-suit and swam out to
the farthest raft, where he stretched
dripping on the wet canvas of
the springboard.
There was a fish jumping and a
star shining and the lights around
the lake were gleaming. Over on
a dark peninsula a piano was play-
ing the songs of last summer and
of summers before that songs
from "Chin-Chin" and
"The Count of Luxemburg" and "The Choco-
late Soldier" and because
the sound of a piano over a stretch of
water had always seemed
beautiful to Dexter he lay perfectly quiet
and listened.
The tune the piano was playing
at that moment had been gay and
new five years before when
Dexter was a sophomore at college. They
had played it at a prom once
when he could not afford the luxury of
proms, and he had stood outside
the gymnasium and listened. The
sound of the tune precipitated
in him a sort of ecstasy and it was
with that ecstasy he viewed what
happened to him now. It was a
mood of intense appreciation, a
sense that, for once, he was mag-
nificently attune to life and
that everything about him was radiating
a brightness and a glamour he
might never know again.
A low, pale oblong detached
itself suddenly from the darkness of
the Island, spitting forth the
reverberate sound of a racing motor-
boat. Two white streamers of
cleft water rolled themselves out be-
hind it and almost immediately
the boat was beside him, drowning
out the hot tinkle of the piano
in the drone of its spray. Dexter rais-
ing himself on his arms was
aware of a figure standing at the wheel,
of two dark eyes regarding him
over the lengthening space of water
then the boat had gone by and
was sweeping in an immense and pur-
poseless circle of spray round
and round in the middle of the lake.
With equal eccentricity one of the
circles flattened out and headed
back toward the raft.
"Who's that?" she
called, shutting off her motor. She was so near
now that Dexter could see her
bathing-suit, which consisted appar-
ently of pink rompers.
The nose of the boat bumped the
raft, and as the latter tilted
rakishly he was precipitated
toward her. With different degrees of
interest they recognized each
other.
"Aren't you one of those
men we played through this afternoon?"
she demanded.
He was.
"Well, do you know how to
drive a motor-boat? Because if you do
1 wish you'd drive this one so I
can ride on the surf-board behind.
My name is Judy Jones" she
favored him with an absurd smirk
rather, what tried to be a
smirk, for, twist her mouth as she might, it
was not grotesque, it was merely
beautiful "and I live in a house
over there on the Island, and in
that house there is a man waiting for
me. When he drove up at the door
I drove out of the dock because he
says I'm his ideal."
There was a fish jumping and a
star shining and the lights around
the lake were gleaming. Dexter
sat beside Judy Jones and she ex-
plained how her boat was driven.
Then she was in the water, swim-
ming to the floating surf-board
with a sinuous crawl. Watching her
was without effort to the eye,
watching a branch waving or a sea-gull
flying. Her arms, burned to
butternut, moved sinuously among the
dull platinum ripples, elbow
appearing first, casting the forearm back
with a cadence of falling water,
then reaching out and down, stabbing
a path ahead.
They moved out into the lake ;
turning, Dexter saw that she was
kneeling on the low rear of the
now uptilted surf-board.
"Go faster," she
called, "fast as it'll go."
Obediently he jammed the lever
forward and the white spray
mounted at the bow. When he
looked around again the girl was
standing up on the rushing
board, her arms spread wide, her eyes
lifted toward the moon.
"It's awful cold," she
shouted. "What's your name?"
He told her.
"Well, why don't you come
to dinner to-morrow night?"
His heart turned over like the
fly-wheel of the boat, and, for the
second time, her casual whim
gave a new direction to his life.
Ill
Next evening while he waited for
her to come down-stairs, Dexter
peopled the soft deep summer
room and the sun-porch that opened
from it with the men who had
already loved Judy Jones. He knew
the sort of men they were the
men who when he first went to college
had entered from the great prep
schools with graceful clothes and
the deep tan of healthy summers.
He had seen that, in one sense, he
was better than these men. He
was newer and stronger. Yet in ac-
knowledging to himself that he
wished his children to be like them
he was admitting that he was but
the rough, strong stuff from which
they eternally sprang.
When the time had come for him
to wear good clothes, he had
known who were the best tailors
in America, and the best tailors in
America had made him the suit he
wore this evening. He had ac-
quired that particular reserve
peculiar to his university, that set it
off from other universities. He
recognized the value to him of such
a mannerism and he had adopted
it ; he knew that to be careless in
dress and manner required more
confidence than to be careful. But
carelessness was for his
children. His mother's name had been
lich. She was a Bohemian of the
peasant class and she had talked
broken English to the end of her
days. Her son must keep to the set
patterns.
At a little after seven Judy
Jones came down-stairs. She wore a
blue silk afternoon dress, and
he was disappointed at first that she
had not put on something more
elaborate. This feeling was accentu-
ated when, after a brief
greeting, she went to the door of a butler's
pantry and pushing it open
called : "You can serve dinner, Martha."
He had rather expected that a
butler would announce dinner, that
there would be a cocktail. Therr
he put these thoughts behind
him as they sat down side by
side on a lounge and looked at each
other.
"Father and mother won't be
here," she said thoughtfully.
He remembered the last time he
had seen her father, and he was
glad the parents were not to be
here to-night they might wonder
who he was. He had been born in
Keeble, a Minnesota village fifty
miles farther north, and he
always gave Keeble as his home instead
of Black Bear Village. Country
towns were well enough to come from
if they weren't inconveniently
in sight and used as footstools by
fashionable lakes.
They talked of his university,
which she had visited frequently
during the past two years, and
of the near-by city which supplied
Sherry Island with its patrons,
and whither Dexter would return next
day to his prospering laundries.
During dinner she slipped into a
moody depression which gave
Dexter a feeling of uneasiness.
Whatever petulance she uttered in
her throaty voice worried him.
Whatever she smiled at at him, at a
chicken liver, at nothing it
disturbed him that her smile could have
no root in mirth, or even in
amusement. When the scarlet corners
of her lips curved down, it was
less a smile than an invitation to a
kiss.
Then, after dinner, she led him
out on the dark sun-porch and
deliberately changed the
atmosphere.
"Do you mind if I weep a
little?" she said.
"I'm afraid I'm boring
you," he responded quickly.
"You're not. I like you.
But I've just had a terrible afternoon.
There was a man I cared about,
and this afternoon he told me out of
a clear sky that he was poor as
a church-mouse. He'd never even
hinted it before. Does this
sound horribly mundane?"
"Perhaps he was afraid to
tell you."
"Suppose he was, 1 ' she
answered. "He didn't start right. You see,
if I'd thought of him as poor
well, I've been mad about loads of
poor men, and fully intended to
marry them all. But in this case, I
hadn't thought of him that way,
and my interest in him wasn't strong
enough to survive the shock. As
if a girl calmly informed her fiance
that she was a widow. He might
not object to widows, but
"Let's start right,"
she interrupted herself suddenly. "Who are
you, anyhow?"
For a moment Dexter hesitated.
Then :
"I'm nobody," he
announced. "My career is largely a matter of
futures."
"Are you poor?"
"No," he said frankly,
"I'm probably making more money than
any man my age in the Northwest.
I know that's an obnoxious re-
mark, but you advised me to
start right."
There was a pause. Then she
smiled and the corners of her mouth
drooped and an almost
imperceptible sway brought her closer to him,
looking up into his eyes. A lump
rose in Dexter's throat, and he
waited breathless for the
experiment, facing the unpredictable com-
pound that would form
mysteriously from the elements of their lips.
Then he saw she communicated her
excitement to him, lavishly,
deeply, with kisses that were
not a promise but a fulfilment. They
aroused in him not hunger
demanding renewal but surfeit that would
demand more surfeit . . . kisses
that were like charity, creating want
by holding back nothing at all.
It did not take him many hours
to decide that he had wanted
Judy Jones ever since he was a
proud, desirous little boy.
IV
It began like that and
continued, with varying shades of intensity,
on such a note right up to the
denouement. Dexter surrendered a part
of himself to the most direct
and unprincipled personality with which
he had ever come in contact.
Whatever Judy wanted, she went after
with the full pressure of her charm.
There was no divergence of
method, no jockeying for
position or premeditation of effects there
was a very little mental side to
any of her affairs. She simply made
men conscious to the highest
degree of her physical loveliness. Dexter
had no desire to change her. Her
deficiencies were knit up with a
passionate energy that
transcended and justified them.
When, as Judy's head lay against
his shoulder that first night,
she whispered, "I don't
know what's the matter with me. Last night
I thought I was in love with a
man and to-night I think I'm in love
with you " it seemed to him
a beautiful and romantic thing to
say. It was the exquisite
excitability that for the moment he con-
trolled and owned. But a week
later he was compelled to view this
same quality in a different
light. She took him in her roadster to a
picnic supper, and after supper
she disappeared, likewise in her road-
ster, with another man. Dexter
became enormously upset and was
scarcely able to be decently
civil to the other people present. When
she assured him that she had not
kissed the other man, he knew she
was lying yet he was glad that
she had taken the trouble to lie to
him.
He was, as he found before the
summer ended, one of a varying
dozen who circulated about her.
Each of them had at one time been
favored above all others about
half of them still basked in the solace
of occasional sentimental
revivals. Whenever one showed signs of
dropping out through long
neglect, she granted him a brief honeyed
hour, which encouraged him to
tag along for a year or so longer.
Judy made these forays upon the
helpless and defeated without
malice, indeed half unconscious
that there was anything mischievous
in what she did.
When a new man came to town
every one dropped out dates
were automatically cancelled.
The helpless part of trying to
do anything about it was that she
did it all herself. She was not
a girl who could be "won" in the
kinetic sense she was proof
against cleverness, she was proof against
charm; if any of these assailed
her too strongly she would imme-
diately resolve the affair to a
physical basis, and under the magic of
her physical splendor the strong
as well as the brilliant played her
game and not their own. She was
entertained only by the gratifica-
tion of her desires and by the
direct exercise of her own charm. Per-
haps from so much youthful love,
so many youthful lovers, she had
come, in self-defense, to
nourish herself wholly from within.
Succeeding Dexter's first
exhilaration came restlessness and dis-
satisfaction. The helpless
ecstasy of losing himself in her was opiate
rather than tonic. It was fortunate
for his work during the winter
that those moments of ecstasy
came infrequently. Early in their ac-
quaintance it had seemed for a
while that there was a deep and spon-
taneous mutual attraction that
first August, for example three
days of long evenings on her
dusky veranda, of strange wan kisses
through the late afternoon, in
shadowy alcoves or behind the protect-
ing trellises of the garden
arbors, of mornings when she was fresh
as a dream and almost shy at
meeting him in the clarity of the rising
day. There was all the ecstasy
of an engagement about it, sharpened
by his realization that there
was no engagement. It was during those
three days that, for the first
time, he had asked her to marry him.
She said "maybe some
day," she said "kiss me," she said "I'd like to
marry you," she said
"I love you" she said nothing.
The three days were interrupted
by the arrival of a New York
man who visited at her house for
half September. To Dexter's agony,
rumor engaged them. The man was
the son of the president of a
great trust company. But at the
end of a month it was reported that
Judy was yawning. At a dance one
night she sat all evening in a
motor-boat with a local beau,
while the New Yorker searched the club
for her frantically. She told
the local beau that she was bored with
her visitor, and two days later
he left. She was seen with him at the
station, and it was reported
that he looked very mournful indeed.
On this note the summer ended.
Dexter was twenty-four, and he
found himself increasingly in a
position to do as he wished. He joined
two clubs in the city and lived
at one of them. Though he was by no
means an integral part of the
stag-lines at these clubs, he managed to
be on hand at dances where Judy
Jones was likely to appear. He
could have gone out socially as
much as he liked he was an eligible
young man, now, and popular with
down-town fathers. His confessed
devotion to Judy Jones had
rather solidified his position. But he had
no social aspirations and rather
despised the dancing men who were
always on tap for the Thursday
or Saturday parties and who filled in
at dinners with the younger
married set. Already he was playing with
the idea of going East to New
York. He wanted to take Judy Jones
with him. No disillusion as to
the world in which she had grown up
could cure his illusion as to
her desirability.
Remember that for only in the
light of it can what he did for her
be understood.
Eighteen months after he first
met Judy Jones he became engaged
to another girl. Her name was
Irene Scheerer, and her father was one
of the men who had always
believed in Dexter. Irene was light-haired
and sweet and honorable, and a
little stout, and she had two suitors
whom she pleasantly relinquished
when Dexter formally asked her to
marry him.
Summer, fall, winter, spring,
another summer, another fall so
much he had given of his active
life to the incorrigible lips of Judy
Jones. She had treated him with
interest, with encouragement, with
malice, with indifference, with
contempt. She had inflicted on him the
innumerable little slights and
indignities possible in such a case
as if in revenge for having ever
cared for him at all. She had beck-
oned him and yawned at him and
beckoned him again and he had
responded often with bitterness
and narrowed eyes. She had brought
him ecstatic happiness and
intolerable agony of spirit. She had caused
him untold inconvenience and not
a little trouble. She had insulted
him, and she had ridden over
him, and she had played his interest
in her against his interest in
his work for fun. She had done every-
thing to him except to criticise
him this she had not done it
seemed to him only because it
might have sullied the utter indiffer-
ence she manifested and
sincerely felt toward him.
When autumn had come and gone
again it occurred to him that he
could not have Judy Jones. He
had to beat this into his mind but he
convinced himself at last. He
lay awake at night for a while and
argued it over. He told himself
the trouble and the pain she had
caused him, he enumerated her
glaring deficiencies as a wife. Then
he said to himself .that he
loved her, and after a while he fell asleep.
For a week, lest he imagined her
husky voice over the telephone or
her eyes opposite him at lunch,
he worked hard and late, and at night
he went to his office and plotted
out his years.
At the end of a week he went to
a dance and cut in on Her once.
For almost the first time since
they had met he did not ask her to sit
out with him or tell her that
she was lovely. It hurt him that she did
not miss these things that was
all. He was not jealous when he saw
that there was a new man
to-night. He had been hardened against
jealousy long before.
He stayed late at the dance. He
sat for an hour with Irene Scheerer
and talked about books and about
music. He knew very little about
either. But he was beginning to
be master of his own time now, and
he had a rather priggish notion
that he the young and already
fabulously successful Dexter
Green should know more about such
things.
That was in October, when he was
twenty-five. In January, Dexter
and Irene became engaged. It was
to be announced in June, and they
were to be married three months
later.
The Minnesota winter prolonged
itself interminably, and it was
almost May when the winds came
soft and the snow ran down into
Black Bear Lake at last. For the
first time in over a year Dexter was
enjoying a certain tranquillity
of spirit. Judy Jones had been in
Florida, and afterward in Hot
Springs, and somewhere she had been
engaged, and somewhere she had
broken it off. At first, when Dexter
had definitely given her up, it
had made him sad that people still
linked them together and asked
for news of her, but when he began
to be placed at dinner next to
Irene Scheerer people didn't ask him
about her any more they told him
about her. He ceased to be an
authority on her.
May at last. Dexter walked the
streets at night when the darkness
was damp as rain, wondering that
so soon, with so little done, so
much of ecstasy had gone from
him. May one year back had been
marked by Judy's poignant,
unforgivable, yet forgiven turbulence
it had been one of those rare
times when he fancied she had grown
to care for him. That old
penny's worth of happiness he had spent
for this bushel of content. He
knew that Irene would be no more than
a curtain spread behind him, a
hand moving among gleaming tea-
cups, a voice calling to
children . . . fire and loveliness were gone,
the magic of nights and the
wonder of the varying hours and seasons
. . . slender lips,
down-turning, dropping to his lips and bearing him
up into a heaven of eyes. . .
.The thing was deep in him. He was too
strong and alive for it to die
lightly.
In the middle of May when the weather
balanced for a few days on
the thin bridge that led to deep
summer he turned in one night at
Irene's house. Their engagement
was to be announced in a week now
no one would be surprised at it.
And to-night they would sit to-
gether on the lounge at the
University Club and look on for an hour
at the dancers. It gave him a
sense of solidity to go with her she was
so sturdily popular, so
intensely "great."
He mounted the steps of the
brownstone house and stepped inside.
"Irene," he called.
Mrs. Scheerer came out of the
living-room to meet him.
"Dexter," she said,
"Irene's gone up-stairs with a splitting head-
ache. She wanted to go with you
but I made her go to bed."
"Nothing serious, I "
"Oh, no. She's going to
play golf with you in the morning. You
can spare her for just one
night, can't you, Dexter?"
Her smile was kind. She and
Dexter liked each other. In the living-
room he talked for a moment
before he said good-night.
Returning to the University
Club, where he had rooms, he stood
in the doorway for a moment and
watched the dancers. He leaned
against the door-post, nodded at
a man or two yawned.
"Hello, darling."
The familiar voice at his elbow
startled him. Judy Jones had left
a man and crossed the room to
him Judy Jones, a slender enamelled
doll in cloth of gold : gold in
a band at her head, gold in two slipper
points at her dress's hem. The
fragile glow of her face seemed to
blossom as she smiled at him. A
breeze of warmth and light blew
through the room. His hands in
the pockets of his dinner-jacket tight-
ened spasmodically. He was
filled with a sudden excitement.
"When did you get
back?" he asked casually.
"Come here and I'll tell
you about it."
She turned and he followed her.
She had been away he could have
wept at the wonder of her
return. She had passed through enchanted
streets, doing things that were
like provocative music. All mysterious
happenings, all fresh and
quickening hopes, had gone away with
her, come back with her now.
She turned in the doorway.
"Have you a car here ? If
you haven't, I have."
"I have a coup."
In then, with a rustle of golden
cloth. He slammed the door. Into
so many cars she had stepped
like this like that her back against
the leather, so her elbow
resting on the door waiting. She would
have been soiled long since had
there been anything to soil her ex-
cept herself but this was her
own self outpouring.
With an effort he forced himself
to start the car and back into the
street. This was nothing, he
must remember. She had done this be-
fore, and he had put her behind
him, as he would have crossed a bad
account from his books.
He drove slowly down-town and,
affecting abstraction, traversed
the deserted streets of the
business section, peopled here and there
where a movie was giving out its
crowd or where QgBsumptive or pugi-
listic youth lounged in front of
pool halls. The clink of glasses and
the slap of hands on the bars
issued from saloons, cloisters of glazed
glass and dirty yellow light.
She was watching him closely and
the silence was embarrassing, yet
in this crisis he could find no
casual word with which to profane the
hour. At a convenient turning he
began to zigzag back toward the
University Club.
"Have you missed me?"
she asked suddenly.
"Everybody missed
you."
He wondered if she knew of Irene
Scheerer. She had been back
only a day her absence had been almost
contemporaneous with his
engagement.
"What a remark!" Judy
laughed sadly without sadness. She
looked at him searchingly. He
became absorbed in the dashboard.
"You're handsomer than you
used to be," she said thoughtfully.
"Dexter, you have the most
rememberable eyes."
He could have laughed at this,
but he did not laugh. It was the
sort of thing that was said to
sophomores. Yet it stabbed at him.
"I'm awfully tired of
everything, darling." She called every one
darling, endowing the endearment
with careless, individual comrad-
erie. "I wish you'd marry
me."
The directness of this confused
him. He should have told her now
that he was going to marry another
girl, but he could not tell her. He
could as easily have sworn that
he had never loved her.
"I think we'd get
along," she continued, on the same note, "unless
probably you've forgotten me and
fallen in love with another girl."
Her confidence was obviously
enormous. She had said, in effect, that
she found such a thing
impossible to believe, that if it were true he
had merely committed a childish
indiscretion and probably to show
off. She would forgive him,
because it was not a matter of any mo-
ment but rather something to be
brushed aside lightly.
"Of course you could never
love anybody but me," she continued,
"I like the way you love
me. Oh, Dexter, have you forgotten last
year?"
"No, I haven't
forgotten."
"Neither have I"
Was she sincerely moved or was
she carried along by the wave of
her own acting ?
"I wish we could be like
that again," she said, and he forced him-
self to answer :
"I don't think we
can."
"I suppose not. ... I hear
you're giving Irene Scheerer a violent
rush."
There was not the faintest
emphasis on the name, yet Dexter was
suddenly ashamed.
"Oh, take me home,"
cried Judy suddenly; "I don't want to go
back to that idiotic dance with
those children."
Then, as he turned up the street
that led to the residence district,
Judy began to cry quietly to
herself. He had never seen her cry
before.
The dark street lightened, the
dwellings of the rich loomed up
around them, he stopped his coupe
in front of the great white bulk
of the Mortimer Joneses' house,
somnolent, gorgeous, drenched with
the splendor of the damp
moonlight. Its solidity startled him. The
strong walls, the steel of the
girders, the breadth and beam and
pomp of it were there only to
bring out the contrast with the young
beauty beside him. It was sturdy
to accentuate her slightness as if
to show what a breeze could be
generated by a butterfly's wing.
He sat perfectly quiet, his
nerves in wild clamor, afraid that if he
moved he would find her
irresistibly in his arms. Two tears had rolled
down her wet face and trembled
on her upper lip.
"I'm more beautiful than
anybody else," she said brokenly, "why
can't I be happy?" Her
moist eyes tore at his stability her mouth
turned slowly downward with an
exquisite sadness: "I'd like to
marry you if you'll have me,
Dexter. I suppose you think I'm not
worth having, but I'll be so
beautiful for you, Dexter."
A million phrases of anger,
pride, passion, hatred, tenderness
fought on his lips. Then a
perfect wave of emotion washed over him,
carrying off with it a sediment
of wisdom, of convention, of doubt,
of honor. This was his girl who
was speaking, his oWn, his beautiful,
his pride.
"Won't you come in ?"
He heard her draw in her breath sharply.
Waiting.
"All right," his voice
was trembling, "I'll come in."
It was strange that neither when
it was over nor a long time after-
ward did he regret that night.
Looking at it from the perspective of
ten years, the fact that Judy's
flare for him endured just one month
seemed of little importance. Nor
did it matter that by his yielding
he subjected himself to a deeper
agony in the end and gave serious
hurt to Irene Scheerer and to
Irene's parents, who had befriended
him. There was nothing
sufficiently pictorial about Irene's grief to
stamp itself on his mind.
Dexter was at bottom
hard-minded. The attitude of the city on his
action was of no importance to
him, not because he was going to
leave the city, but because any
outside attitude on the situation
seemed superficial. He was
completely indifferent to popular opinion.
Nor, when he had seen that it
was no use, that he did not possess in
himself the power to move
fundamentally or to hold Judy Jones, did
he bear any malice toward her.
He loved her, and he would love her
until the day he was too old for
loving but he could not have her.
So he tasted the deep pain that
is reserved only for the strong, just
as he had tasted for a little
while the deep happiness.
Even the ultimate falsity of the
grounds upon which Judy termi-
nated the engagement that she
did not want to "take him away" from
Irene Judy who had wanted
nothing else did not revolt him. He
was beyond any revulsion or any
amusement.
He went East in February with
the intention of selling out his
laundries and settling in New
York but the war came to America
in March and changed his plans.
He returned to the West, handed
over the management of the
business to his partner, and went into
the first officers' tftining-camp
in late April. He was one of those
young thousands who greeted the
war with a certain amount of relief,
welcoming the liberation from
webs of tangled emotion.
VI
This story is not his biography,
remember, although things creep
into it which have nothing to do
with those dreams he had when he
was young. We are almost done
with them and with him now. There
is only one more incident to be
related here, and it happens seven
years farther on.
It took place in New York, where
he had done well so well that
there were no barriers too high
for him. He was thirty-two years
old, and, except for one flying
trip immediately after the war, he had
not been West in seven years. A
man named Devlin from Detroit
came into his office to see him
in a business way, and then and there
this incident occurred, and
closed out, so to speak, this particular side
of his life.
"So you're from the Middle
West," said the man Devlin with care-
less curiosity. "That's
funny I thought men like you were probably
born and raised on Wall Street.
You know wife of one of my best
friends in Detroit came from
your city. I was an usher at the wed-
ding."
Dexter waited with no
apprehension of what was coming.
"Judy Simms," said
Devlin with no particular interest; "Judy
Jones she was once."
"Yes, I knew her." A
dull impatience spread over him. He had
heard, of course, that she was
married perhaps deliberately he had
heard no more.
"Awfully nice girl,"
brooded Devlin meaninglessly, "I'm sort of
sorry for her."
"Why?" Something in
Dexter was alert, receptive, at once.
"Oh, Lud Simms has gone to
pieces in a way. I don't mean he ill-
uses her, but he drinks and runs
around "
"Doesn't she run
around?"
"No. Stays at home with her
kids."
"Oh."
"She's a little too old for
him," said Devlin.
"Too old!" cried
Dexter. "Why, man, she's only twenty-seven."
He was possessed with a wild
notion of rushing out into the streets
and taking a train to Detroit.
He rose to his feet spasmodically.
"I guess you're busy,"
Devlin apologized quickly. "I didn't
realize "
"No, Fm not busy,"
said Dexter, steadying his voice. "I'm not busy
at all. Not busy at all. Did you
say she was twenty-seven? No, I
said she was twenty-seven."
"Yes, you did," agreed
Devlin dryly.
"Go on, then. Go on."
"What do you mean?"
"About Judy Jones."
Devlin looked at him helplessly.
"Well, that's I told you
all there is to it. He treats her like the
devil. Oh, they're not going to
get divorced or anything. When he's
particularly outrageous she
forgives him. In fact, I'm inclined to
think she loves him. She was a
pretty girl when she first came to
Detroit."
A pretty girl 1 The phrase
struck Dexter as ludicrous.
"Isn't she a pretty girl,
any more ?"
"Oh, she's all right."
"Look here," said
Dexter, sitting down suddenly. "I don't under-
stand. You say she was a c
pretty girl' and now you say she's 'all
right.' I don't understand what
you mean Judy Jones wasn't a
pretty girl, at all. She was a
great beauty. Why, I knew her, I knew
her. She was "
Devlin laughed pleasantly.
"I'm not trying to start a row,"
he said. "I think Judy's a nice
girl and I like her. I can't
understand how a man like Lud Simms
could fall madly in love with
her, but he did.'' Then he added : "Most
of the women like her."
Dexter looked closely at Devlin,
thinking wildly that there must
be a reason for this, some
insensitivity in the man or some private
malice.
"Lots of women fade just
like that" Devlin snapped his fingers.
"You must have seen it
happen. Perhaps I've forgotten how pretty
she was at her wedding. I've
seen her so much since then, you see.
She has nice eyes."
A sort of dullness settled down
upon Dexter. For the first time in
his life he felt like getting
very drunk. He knew that he was laughing
loudly at something Devlin had
said, but he did not know what it
was or why it was funny. When,
in a few minutes, Devlin went he
lay down on his lounge and
looked out the window at the New York
sky-line into which the sun was
sinking in dull lovely shades of pink
and gold.
He had thought that having
nothing else to lose he was invulner-
able at last but he knew that he
had just lost something more, as
surely as if he had married Judy
Jones and seen her fade away
before his eyes.
The dream was gone. Something
had been taken from him. In a
sort of panic he flushed the
palms of his hands into his eyes and
tried to bring up a picture of
the waters lapping on Sherry Island and
the moonlit veranda, and gingham
on the golf-links and the dry sun
and the gold color of her neck's
soft down. And her mouth damp to
his kisses and her eyes
plaintive with melancholy and her freshness
like new fine linen in the
morning. Why, these things were no longer
in the world ! They had existed
and they existed no longer.
For the first time in years the
tears were streaming down his face.
But they were for himself now.
He did not care about mouth and
eyes and moving hands. He wanted
to care, and he could not care.
For he had gone away and he
could never go back any more. The
gates were closed, the sun was
gone down, and there was no beauty
but the gray beauty of steel
that withstands all time. Even the grief
he could have borne was left
behind in the country of illusion, of
youth, of the richness of life,
where his winter dreams had flourished.
"Long ago," he said,
"long ago, there was something in me, but
now that thing is gone. Now that
thing is gone, that thing is gone. I
cannot cry. I cannot care. That
thing will come back no more."