As the gray became blue, brightened and filled the room, he crossed to his bed and threw himself down on it, gripping the edges fiercely.
"I love her," he cried aloud, "God!"
As he said this something gave way within him like a lump melting in his throat. The air cleared and became radiant with dawn, and turning over on his face he began to sob dully into the pillow.
In the sunshine of three o'clock Clark Darrow chugging painfully along Jackson Street was hailed by the Jellybean, who stood on the curb with his fingers in his vest pockets.
"Hi!" called Clark, bringing his Ford to an astonishing stop alongside. "Just get up?"
The Jellybean shook his head.
"Never did go to bed. Felt sorta restless, so I took a long walk this morning out in the country. Just got into town this minute."
"Should think you would feel restless. I been feeling thataway all day"
"I'm thinkin' of leavin' town" continued the Jellybean, absorbed by his own thoughts. "Been thinkin' of goin' up on the farm, and takin' a little that work off Uncle Dun. Reckin I been bummin' too long."
Clark was silent and the Jellybean continued:
"I reckin maybe after Aunt Mamie dies I could sink that money of mine in the farm and make somethin' out of it. All my people originally came from that part up there. Had a big place."
Clark looked at him curiously.
"That's funny," he said. "Thisthis sort of affected me the same way."
The Jellybean hesitated.
"I don't know," he began slowly, "somethin' aboutabout that girl last night talkin' about a lady named Diana Mannersan English lady, sorta got me thinkin'!" He drew himself up and looked oddly at Clark, "I had a family once," he said defiantly.
Clark nodded.
"I know."
"And I'm the last of 'em," continued the Jellybean his voice rising slightly, "and I ain't worth shucks. Name they call me by means jellyweak and wobbly like. People who weren't nothin' when my folks was a lot turn up their noses when they pass me on the street."
Again Clark was silent.
"So I'm through, I'm goin' today. And when I come back to this town it's going to be like a gentleman."
Clark took out his handkerchief and wiped his damp brow.
"Reckon you're not the only one it shook up," he admitted gloomily. "All this thing of girls going round like they do is going to stop right quick. Too bad, too, but everybody'll have to see it thataway."
"Do you mean," demanded Jim in surprise, "that all that's leaked out?"
"Leaked out? How on earth could they keep it secret. It'll be announced in the papers tonight. Doctor Lamar's got to save his name somehow."
Jim put his hands on the sides of the car and tightened his long fingers on the metal.
"Do you mean Taylor investigated those checks?"
It was Clark's turn to be surprised.
"Haven't you heard what happened?"
Jim's startled eyes were answer enough.
"Why," announced Clark dramatically, "those four got another bottle of corn, got tight and decided to shock the townso Nancy and that fella Merritt were married in Rockville at seven o'clock this morning."
A tiny indentation appeared in the metal under the Jellybean's fingers.
"Married?"
"Sure enough. Nancy sobered up and rushed back into town, crying and frightened to deathclaimed it'd all been a mistake. First Doctor Lamar went wild and was going to kill Merritt, but finally they got it patched up some way, and Nancy and Merritt went to Savannah on the twothirty train."
Jim closed his eyes and with an effort overcame a sudden sickness.
"It's too bad," said Clark philosophically. "I don't mean the weddingreckon that's all right, though I don't guess Nancy cared a darn about him. But it's a crime for a nice girl like that to hurt her family that way."
The Jellybean let go the car and turned away. Again something was going on inside him, some inexplicable but almost chemical change.
"Where you going?" asked Clark.
The Jellybean turned and looked dully back over his shoulder.
"Got to go," he muttered. "Been up too long; feelin' right sick."
"Oh."
The street was hot at three and hotter still at four, the April dust seeming to enmesh the sun and give it forth again as a worldold joke forever played on an eternity of afternoons. But at half past four a first layer of quiet fell and the shades lengthened under the awnings and heavy foliaged trees. In this heat nothing mattered. All life was weather, a waiting through the hot where events had no significance for the cool that was soft and caressing like a woman's hand on a tired forehead. Down in Georgia there is a feelingperhaps inarticulatethat this is the greatest wisdom of the Southso after a while the Jellybean turned into a poolhall on Jackson Street where he was sure to find a congenial crowd who would make all the old jokesthe ones he knew.
The Camel's Back
I
The glazed eye of the tired reader resting for a second on the above title will presume it to be merely metaphorical. Stories about the cup and the lip and the bad penny and the new broom rarely have anything, to do with cups or lips or pennies or brooms. This story Is the exception. It has to do with a material, visible and largeaslife camel's back.
Starting from the neck we shall work toward the tail. I want you to meet Mr. Perry Parkhurst, twentyeight, lawyer, native of Toledo. Perry has nice teeth, a Harvard diploma, parts his hair in the middle. You have met him beforein Cleveland, Portland, St. Paul, Indianapolis, Kansas City, and so forth. Baker Brothers, New York, pause on their semiannual trip through the West to clothe him; Montmorency & Co. dispatch a young man posthaste every three months to see that he has the correct number of little punctures on his shoes. He has a domestic roadster now, will have a French roadster if he lives long enough, and doubtless a Chinese tank if it comes into fashion. He looks like the advertisement of the young man rubbing his sunsetcolored chest with liniment and goes East every other year to his class reunion.
I want you to meet his Love. Her name is Betty Medill, and she would take well in the movies. Her father gives her three hundred a month to dress on, and she has tawny eyes and hair and feather fans of five colors. I shall also introduce her father, Cyrus Medill. Though he is to all appearances flesh and blood, he is, strange to say, commonly known in Toledo as the Aluminum Man. But when he sits in his club window with two or three Iron Men, and the White Pine Man, and the Brass Man, they look very much as you and I do, only more so, if you know what I mean.
Now during the Christmas holidays of 1919 there took place in Toledo, counting only the people with the italicized the, fortyone dinner parties, sixteen dances, six luncheons, male and female, twelve teas, four stag dinners, two weddings, and thirteen bridge parties. It was the cumulative effect of all this that moved Perry Parkhurst on the twentyninth day of December to a decision.
This Medill girl would marry him and she wouldn't marry him. She was having such a good time that she hated to take such a definite step. Meanwhile, their secret engagement had got so long that it seemed as if any day it might break off of its own weight. A little man named Warburton, who knew it all, persuaded Perry to superman her, to get a marriage license and go up to the Medill house and tell her she'd have to marry him at once or call it off forever. So he presented himself, his heart, his license, and his ultimatum, and within five minutes they were in the midst of a violent quarrel, a burst of sporadic open fighting such as occurs near the end of all long wars and engagements. It brought about one of those ghastly lapses in which two people who are in love pull up sharp, look at each other coolly and think it's all been a mistake. Afterward they usually kiss wholesomely and assure the other person it was all their fault. Say it all was my fault! Say it was! I want to hear you say it!
But while reconciliation was trembling in the air, while each was, in a measure, stalling it off, so that they might the more voluptuously and sentimentally enjoy it when it came, they were permanently interrupted by a twentyminute phone call for Betty from a garrulous aunt. At the end of eighteen minutes Perry Parkhurst, urged on by pride and suspicion and injured dignity, put on his long fur coat, picked up his light brown soft hat, and stalked out the door.
"It's all over," he muttered brokenly as he tried to jam his car into first. "It's all overif I have to choke you for an hour, damn you!". The last to the car, which had been standing some time and was quite cold.
He drove downtownthat is, he got into a snow rut that led him downtown. He sat slouched down very low in his seat, much too dispirited to care where he went.
In front of the Clarendon Hotel he was hailed from the sidewalk by a bad man named Baily, who had big teeth and lived at the hotel and had never been in love.
"Perry," said the bad man softly when the roadster drew up beside him at the curb, "I've got six quarts of the doggonedest still champagne you ever tasted. A third of it's yours, Perry, if you'll come upstairs and help Martin Macy and me drink it."
"Baily," said Perry tensely, "I'll drink your champagne. I'll drink every drop of it, I don't care if it kills me."
"Shut up, you nut!" said the bad man gently. "They don't put wood alcohol in champagne. This is the stuff that proves the world is more than six thousand years old. It's so ancient that the cork is petrified. You have to pull it with a stone drill."
"Take me upstairs," said Perry moodily. "If that cork sees my heart it'll fall out from pure mortification."
The room upstairs was full of those innocent hotel pictures of little girls eating apples and sitting in swings and talking to dogs. The other decorations were neckties and a pink man reading a pink paper devoted to ladies in pink tights.
"When you have to go into the highways and byways" said the pink man, looking reproachfully at Baily and Perry.
"Hello, Martin Macy," said Perry shortly, "where's this stoneage champagne?"
"What's the rush? This isn't an operation, understand. This is a party."
Perry sat down dully and looked disapprovingly at all the neckties.