I

I

"You are late. Billy's been howling the house down."

"All babies cry, big or little, now and then. The nurse is with Billy. I—" Nellie Cameron paused to smooth a quiver out of her voice—"I am not late."

"You are not?" Joseph Cameron, bewildered, laid his paper upon his knees and squinted up at his wife.

"No, Joe, I am not." As if it absorbed her, and no one could have said that it did not, for she kept house beautifully, Nellie straightened an etching; the quietly she walked out of the room.

She went into their bedroom and closed the door. After a while Cameron, watching warily, saw her come into the hall again in a peach-colored dress that he particularly liked her in; saw her go down the hall, away from him—and she had a very good back—to the nursery door, the warm, cheerful firelight falling full upon her face, her hands, her softly glowing dress. Billy, their only son, just learning to walk, toddled to meet her. Cameron saw the chubby hands rumple her skirts, saw Nellie stoop and swing him high with her firm arms, the drop him to his place upon her breast. The door close, the hall was shadowy again, the apartment as still as a place marked "To Let."

The dinner was on time and excellent; Nellie, decorative and chatty, was promptly in her place. Dinner over, they went to the sitting-room for their coffee. The apartment was very high up, the windows looking over the tree-tops of the Drive, across the Hudson tot he Jersey shore. It was March, and the shore lights wavered in gusts of rain that threatened to turn to snow. The room was warm; Cameron was suffocating; Nellie was serenely unaware. She had eaten well, from her soup through her cheese. There are times when, to a man, a woman's appetite is the last straw. She was tired, she said, but at her ease, and never prettier.

"Going out to-night, Joey?"

"Yes. Bridge hand around at Gordon's. Want a talk with Gordon about a matter of business."

"I like to have things to do in the afternoon, but when night comes"—Nellie smothered a contented yawn—"I love getting into something comfy, and just buzzing round our own lamp."

"I must own that I have never found afternoon diversions to be diverting." To save him he could not keep his voice good-natured. He had had a grind of a day, and was dog-tired; it seemed to him she ought to know it and talk about it.

"Yes?" Nellie mused. "It was amusing at the club to-day—the Non-descripts." She laughed softly. "It wasn't 'nondescript' to-day, though!"

"Some old maid telling you to bring your children up on the country, and throw your husbands out of their jobs?"

"What, Joey?" Nellie seemed to bring her thoughts back from a long way off. "Old maid? I should say not! We had a man. We nearly always do. Then everybody comes, and there's more glow. He was an English socialist—I guess he was a socialist. Burne-Jones hair, and a homespun jacket,—loose, and all that,—and a heavy ribbon on his glasses. He talked about the new man."

"The—what?"

"The new man." Nellie opened her eyes wide, as if her husband puzzled her.

"Well—I'm damned!"

Nellie broke into sudden mirth.

"You were, Joey dear; that is just what you were. You were damned all the way there and back again."

Cameron strangled.

"Have I the honor to typify the—new creature?"

"You're the very image of him, Joey dear." And she smiled upon him as if he were some new moth, in at their window, to buzz round their lamp.

"And—this person—?"

Nellie became eagerly communicative.

"I do wonder if I can make you see him? Tall and dark, and with good-looking, thinnish hands and almost amusing way of playing with his eye-glasses. You know, Joey: the sort of distinguished talk-it-all-out sort of man that just makes men rage. Of course," she went on, largely wise, "he's the sort of socialist to make a real socialist rage, but he's just the thing for clubs."

"You often have them?"

"Of course," she laughed. "You see, we don't see much of men at home any more. It keeps us from forgetting how you look, and how amusing you may be."

Cameron gazed before him into a chaos without words.

Nellie was oblivious.

"He finished off with a perfect bomb, Joey. It was funny! Of course the new man's a city product, and he drew him to the life: rushed and tortured by ambition, tired out at the end of the day, too tired to be possibly amusing, his nerves excited till anything quieter than lower Broadway hurts his ears, all passion and brilliance spent on business, dinners here and there, with people who all have their ax to grind, too, and are keyed up to it by rows and rows of cocktails. He drew him without mercy, and he had every wife there either wincing or laughing, with the truth of what he said. He was quite eloquent." She paused, she laughed softly, she turned her eyes upon him. "Then, Joey, guess—just guess!—what he said!"

"Far be it from me!"

"He said that any intelligent modern woman would require at least one husband and three lovers to arrive at the standards and companionship of one wholesome old-fashioned man!"

Cameron got to his feet and held to the top shelf of the bookcase.

"Do you mean to tell me that respectable women sit and listen to such talk?"

"But, Joey dear, you see so little of us respectable women now, you don't really know us—"

"It's not decent—"

Nelly was all patience.

"But, you know, Joey dear, I think maybe it is true. Don't you think so?"

Cameron swallowed two or three retorts; then with a laugh that seemed to break to pieces in the air, he went into he hall, got into his hat and coat, and left the house.

Nellie listened gravely.

"Poor dear old land-lubber!" she sighed. "But it had to come sooner or later!" Then she went to the telephone.

"57900 Bryant, please. May I speak to Mr. Crane?"

II

When Cameron came in at midnight he found his wife and his old friend Willoughby Crane playing chess in the dining room.

"Hello, Joe, old man," murmured Crane. "That you?"

"Why, yes, I believe it is I," said Cameron.

"Almost forgot what you looked like," Crane rambled pleasantly.
"Dropped in for a reminder."

"I'm sorry to have missed you," muttered Cameron.

"Well, you haven't altogether missed me, you know: so cheer up, old man. If Nell's good for a rubber, you may have the joy of my presence for an hour or two longer. You're lucky, having a wife who can play chess!"

"Get yourself a drink, Joey," suggested Nellie. "The whisky's in the sideboard, down on he left."

"Don't you suppose I know where the whisky is?" demanded Cameron.

"Maybe there's not much left." Nellie looked on, all solicitude.

Cameron, his thought babbling over the good old days of the
ducking-stool, poured himself carefully a highball that was brown.
Silence reigned. The light fell upon the head and shoulders of
Crane and his long, quick-fingered hands.

"After a man has slaved his soul out," Cameron moaned, "these are the things a woman cares about!"

Crane won the rubber, and spent considerable gallantry upon Nellie in compensation. Cameron had yawned all through, but no one had noticed. Crane lighted a cigarette and perched upon the corner of the dining-table.

"I say, Joe, got anything on to-morrow night?"

"I have," said Cameron.

"Something you can't chuck?"

"Scarcely. A director's dinner."

Crane grew thoughtful.

"You certainly are a victim of the power-passion," he sighed, considering Cameron. "I don't know how you stand it. I'd have more money, no doubt, if I weren't so apathetic, but, by Jinks, it doesn't look worth it to me!"

"A question of taste," said Cameron briefly.

"Taste? If that were all!" He smoked, looking at Nellie through the haze. "I say, Nell, I've got tickets for Kreisler to-morrow night. Come with me, there's a good girl! Lend me your wife, will you, Joe?"

"Lend?" echoed Nellie. "I like that! Anybody'd take me for goods and chattels. Of course I'll come. I'd love to."

"You know, Joey," Crane went on simply, "Nellie's the only woman I know that it's real joy to hear music with. She knows what she's listening to. A fellow can sort of forget that he's got her along, an still be glad he has. As for you, you old money-hunting blunderbuss, the way you squirm in the presence of music ought to be a penitentiary offense. I'm almost glad you can't go." He gave a laugh that was dangerously genuine, and bolted for the hall to get his coat and hat.

"Poor old Joe is almost asleep," said Nellie, sweetly.

Joe did not look it, but Willoughby got out solicitously, and he sat upon a damp bench opposite Cameron's glowing windows, and he laughed and laughed till a policeman sternly ordered him to move on.

"Isn't Willoughby a dear!" Nellie commented as she moved about, putting things in their places for the night. Cameron yawned obviously. Nellie hummed a snatch of a tune.

All that long night Cameron lay stretched upon the edge of their bed, staring into the lumpy darkness. Nellie slept like a baby. But once, soon after the lights were turned off, Cameron's blood froze by inches from his head to his feet. It seemed to him that Nellie was laughing, was fairly biting her pillow to keep from laughing aloud! Gravely, of the darkness, he asked how all this had come about. He asked it of the familiar, shadowy heap of Nellie's clothes upon the chair by the window, asked if he had deserved it. Toward dawn he slept.

III

Cameron, after the way of the new man, kept some evening clothes down town. It saved traveling. The next afternoon, about four o'clock, there came, somewhere between the pit of his stomach and his brain, an aching weight. Conscience! At six-thirty he hung his dinner-jacket back in the closet and sent the directors word that he had a headache. Then, as blind as a moth, he started for home, for that lamp about which Nellie "Loved to buzz."

He let himself into the apartment, chuckling to think of Nellie's surprise, at just the hour at which they were used to dining. The place was shadowy, the table in its between-meals garb. The aching weight came back. He tapped on the nursery door.

Miss Merritt, the nurse, was dining by the nursery window, Billy's high chair drawn near by. Billy, drowsy and rosy, was waving a soup-spoon about his head, dabbing at the lights upon the silver with fat fingers that were better at clinging than at letting go.

"Good evening, Miss Merritt," said Cameron. "Hello, Bill! Where's your mother?" His tone struck false, for through his mind was booming the horrible question, "Can Nellie have gone out with that ass Crane to dine?"

Miss Merritt's mousy face became all eyes.

"Why, sir, Mrs. Cameron has gone out to dinner, and after to a concert. I guess you forgot, sir."

"Oh, yes," said Cameron, easily. "This is the night of the concert. I had absolutely forgotten. I'd have got a bite down town if I'd thought. Is the cook in?"

"Sure, sir. I'll call her."

She left Cameron alone with Billy, who, cannibal-wise, was chewing his father's hand and crowing over the appetizing bumps and veins.

"If you'd jest 'ave 'phoned, sir," panted the cook, who was a large, purple-faced person.

Cameron sighed.

"Just anything, Katy. I have a headache. Some eggs and toast—poached eggs, I think."

In another moment the maid passed the nursery door, with white things over her arm, on her way to set the table.

Cameron, dazed as never in his life before, lifted Billy to his shoulder and trotted up and down the room. "Nice little boy!" he laughed, Billy's damp fists hitting at him in ecstasy. "I'll just take him to the sitting-room while you finish your dinner." He did his best to pretend that the situation was not unusual, to act as if, in his own home, a man could be nothing but at home. All these confounded hirelings, acting as if they owned the place, had the cheek to be amazed over his dropping in!

Miss Merritt beamed.

"I always say, sir, that boys should know their fathers."

"Boys should know their fathers?" This was almost the last straw.

"Here!" said Miss Merritt, holding out a pink-edged blanket. "Jest put in on your lap, sir." There was about her that utter peculiar lack of decorum that is common to nurses and mothers and Cameron, blushing furiously, grabbed the blanket and fled.

"Boys should know their father, hey?" Cameron was enraged. "We'll see about that pretty quick!" Billy crowed with joy as the blanket flapped about them, and, above the chasm of his doubts and his conscience Cameron heard himself laugh, too. He got into his arm-chair. Billy, so warm and solid and gay, so evidently liking him, gave him, parent that he was, the thrill of adventure as his hands held him and knew him for his own. The blanket spread upon his knees, the door closed, Cameron expanded with the desire to know his son, even as it was desirable that his son should know him. He turned him over and around, he studied the vagaries of scallops and pearl buttons; profoundly he pitied his small image for all of his discomforts, and advised him to grow out of safety-pins as fast as possible. He fell into a philosophical mood, spouting away at Bill, and Bill responded with fists and delicious gurgles and an imitative sense of investigation. Cameron reflected, with illumination, upon the amusing sounds a baby makes when the world is well. They were really having an awfully good time.

Billy was fuzzy and blond, one of those moist, very blue-eyed babies that women appreciate. Cameron all at once saw why. Warmth expanded his aching heart, and his arms circled his own mite of boy. Billy yawned, agreed instantly with Cameron that a yawn from a baby was funny, and with a chuckle pitched against Cameron, bumped his nose on a waistcoat button, considered the button solemnly, with his small mouth stuck out ridiculously, and then snuggled into the hollow of his father's arms, and, closing his big eyes with a confidence that made thrills creep over him, the man, and brought something stinging to his eyes, Bill went to sleep.

After an unmeasured lapse of time, Miss Merritt came for the baby.
"Oh, the lambkin! Ain't he sweet, sir?"

Cameron ached in every joint, but he did not know it.

"Take care how you handle him!" he whispered. "It's awful to be awakened out of one's first sleep!"

"I know better than to wake a sleepin' baby, believe me," said Miss
Merritt with a touch of spice.

The door closed. Cameron sat stretching his stiff arms and legs and staring before him, and upon his usually tired and lined face was the beam of full joy.

Then came dinner, a lonely, silent mockery of a meal. And back the question came, booming over the soft tinkling of glass and silver. He realized, with his salad, that four nights out of seven, Nellie dined like this, alone. His lower lip protruded, and lines of conscience fell in a curtain on his face.

"Mrs. Cameron hates eatin' 'lone, too," said the maid. "She generally eats early, so 's t' have Billy in his high chair 'longside. If he sleeps, she reads a book, sir."

He was alone in the sitting-room with his coffee, and the place had sunk into fathomless silence. It was only half after eight! He stuck his head out of the window. Soft flakes touched and soothed his feverish head. "Damn money!" he whispered suddenly, then stood back in the room, startled, staring his blasphemy in the face. He'd go out in the snow, and get rid of himself. This was awful!

Bundled in a greatcoat, collar high, trousers rolled up, he ducked out of the great marble and iron vestibule into the night. There was no wind, and the snow was falling softly, steadily. The drive was deserted, and he made his way across to the walk along the wall. By the light of the lamp, blurred by the flakes till it looked like a tall-stemmed thistle-ball, he looked at his watch. No matter where Nellie had dined, she was a the concert by now, and a great sigh of relief fluttered the flakes about his mouth.

He turned north, glad of the rise in the ground to walk against. "By jinks!" he smiled grudgingly, "it's not so bad out here. We city idiots, we—NEW MEN, with all our motors and subways, we are forgetting how to prowl."

The world fell of to shadow a little beyond the shore-line, a mere space of air and flakes. Ice swirled by its way to the sea, for the tide was going out. He peered; he began to hear all sorts of fine snow-muffled sounds; and suddenly, away out on the river, something was going on—boats whistling and signaling, chatting in their scientific persiflage, out in the dark and cold of the night. "Lonesome, too!" Cameron laughed, and, boyishly, he tossed a snow-ball into the space, as if he'd have something to say out there, too! "I'm soft!" he groaned, clutching his arm. And suddenly he smiled to think how one of these days he and Bill would come out here and play together. He looked about, and a sudden pride filled him. He was actually the only creature enjoying this splendid snow! He had passed one old gentleman in a fur-lined coat, with a cap upon his white hair, walking slowly, a white bulldog playing after him in the scarcely trodden snow.

Cameron turned home, a new and inexplicable glow upon him, cares dropped away. He marched; he laughed aloud once with a sudden thought of Bill. "Little corker!" He let himself in, and went straight to the bedroom to change his shoes. "I must get some water-tight things to prowl in," he thought, and he whistled a line of "Tipperary." Blurred in a pleasant fatigue he sat on the edge of his bed, staring at his wet socks, when the telephone jingled, and he hurried out to answer.

"Yep, this is Cameron. Oh, hello, old girl! Thought I'd just come up for a quiet home dinner, you know." A grin like the setting sun for warmth spread over his face as he listened, as he felt the tables turning under his wet feet.

"Nope. Just bored down-town. Felt like bein' cozy and—buzzin' round the lamp in something comfy. Fine! Had a regular banquet! Bill's all right, little devil! I tucked him in so he shouldn't be lonesome.

"Me? I've been out walkin'. Been throwin' snow-balls at the street-lamps. My feet are soakin', but I don't care, I don't care. Heard a concert myself, thanks. Whistles and things tootin' out in the snow on the river to beat the band! Don't think of it! I'm fine. Enjoy yourself. What's life for? Good night, old girl. Don't lose your key!"

Cameron got as far as the cedar chest in the hall, but there, in his wet socks, he sat down and he laughed until he ached all over. Suddenly he stiffened, and his heels banged against the chest.

Miss Merritt, mouth and eyes wide open, stood absorbing him, as crimson as was Cameron himself.

"I heard the 'phone," she faltered. "Miss. Cameron always calls up to know if Billy's all right—"

"I know that she does," said Cameron, stiffly, and, rising, he stocking-footed it past her and shut himself in his bedroom.

"yes, sir; good night, sir." Miss Merritt stared at his door. "Good Lord!" she whispered in the nursery, "how awful for Billy and her if he takes to drink!"

Nellie came out of the telephone booth, her face white with horror.
"Willoughby," she gasped, "get me a taxi quick!"

"Billy—"

"No, no, NO! It's Joe!"

"What—"

"Oh," she wailed, "I've gone too far! Joe is—drunk!"

Willoughby's face went to pieces.

"Don't look like that, Nell! Don't! What of it? Just what we've been up to, isn't it?"

"How can you say that? Get my wraps. I am going home."

"Your car isn't ordered till eleven—"

"What do I care what I go in? Oh, I have been such a fool!"

"Don't mention it," grinned Crane as he wrapped her coat about her.

Gaily Crane waved his white-gloved hand to her, her face gleaming back pearl-like for an instant in the shadowy taxi; then she was whirled northward and lost in the snowy night. Back in his place next to Nellie's empty chair, he mused tenderly over the vagaries of a mere bachelor till the incomparable Austrian carried his mind off to where tone is reality, where there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage.

Nellie fitted the key into the lock. Her fingers shook. The apartment was dark except for a light in the hall, and as still as if it were empty. If only Joe would STAY asleep till he'd had time to sleep this horrible state of affairs away!

She switched off the light and carefully let herself into their room, and stood a moment, huddled, breathless, against the door. The room was ghostly. The vague, snow-veiled light filtered in from the street-lamp below, making of Cameron an incoherent lump, wrapped to his eyes in the covers of their chintz-hung bed.

Her hands clasped tight, she peered at him through the shadows. He did not move. He was sleeping heavily, curiously, irregularly, his breath coming in jerky little snorts. "Oh," she wailed in her guilt heart, "he is, he is! Poor dear old Joey, drunk! And it's all, all my fault!" Swiftly she undressed in the dark. If he were to awaken, to begin saying awful maudlin things—-

Her heart pounding, she lifted the covers and crept into martyrdom on the hard edge of the bed. Cameron slept on. Once he seemed to be strangling in a bad dream, and she fought with her sense of duty to awaken him, then, miserably, let him strangle!

Gravely Nellie's tired eyes traveled from familiar shadow to shadow, to rest at last upon the dangling heap of clothes upon a chair by the window that symbolized Joe Cameron by the sane light of day. Fatigue tossed her off to sleep now and then; terror snatched her back and made her cry. In the first faint dawn she awakened with a start to find that in her sleep her tired body had slipped back to its place, and her head was resting deliciously upon her pillow. And, with the growing dawn, humor came creeping back, and try as she would, her mouth twitched. Of all people, dear old Joey! Carefully she turned her head and peered at him. His face was turned toward her, what light there was fell full upon him. Wonder took away her smile. His face was fresh, the lines of care and worry softened away as if he were at the end of a two weeks' vacation. She rested her chin on her arm, amazed, puzzled. And suddenly a grin like the sunrise spread over Joe's face, and he opened his eyes.

[signed] Alice Woods

By courtesy of "The Century."

To Those Who Go

In a sense the hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who go to France are modern crusaders. Like the valiant men of the Middle Ages who traveled far to fight in strange lands for the ideal that possessed their souls, these twentieth-century knights-errant go to defend the ideals of liberty and right and honor which are the issues of this war and which our Allies have successfully upheld for more than three years.

In that chivalric spirit General Pershing stood at the tomb of LaFayette and said, "LaFayette, we are here." As a young man only twenty years old LaFayette went out to a new land to fight for liberty, and now after nearly a century and a half the same inspiration that sent him forth is taking our young men back to fight in the land o his birth the old fight for right. The great romance of international history which the relations of France and America have afforded from the birth of this republic has entered a new chapter with the pilgrimage of our fighting men to Europe, and the inestimable service of LaFayette and his comrades to our infant republic is now to be in part repaid by the nation that France helped to establish.

But though it is a chivalric mission on which our soldiers go, they should not enter France in the attitude of saviors. It must be remembered that the United States came very late into this war, and while our troops and even more our money and material resources may have decisive weight toward victory, yet it is France, England, Italy, Russia against whom the enemy has spent his strength. Our Allies have brought the war already to its turning point, and we can at best only add completeness to their achievement. Furthermore, while we aid France and her Allies, we are defending ourselves also. We went to war because Germany was killing our citizens, was plotting against the peace and security of our nation, because her restless ambition and lust for power were choking not only Europe but the world.

Our American soldiers will find in France a people who have endured with wonderful courage and devotion through more than three years of terrific strain against odds which must often have seemed hopeless. The French are the heroes of this war. They have been in the fight from the beginning and will be there until the end. Their armies were fully engaged when England had not a hundred thousand men under arms and Italy was a neutral; they fought on when Russia lost her grip; and they will not quit until their land is cleared of invaders and the Prussian shadow that has darkened France for more than forty years is lifted. More than any other country except Belgium, France has felt the horror and hardships of the war which we are spared because she has paid the price of our protection.

American soldiers who go to France are to be envied because they are getting what comes to few men,—opportunity to be of direct, vital service to that country. To be young, to be fit, to have a part however small in the great events that are making the world over into a safer and happier place for our children to live in, is something for a man to be proud of now and to remember with satisfaction to his last day.

The war may last much longer than we now anticipate, but there can be no doubt of the ultimate victory of the cause to which we are committed. The world never turns back, it moves always forward, always upward. Our soldiers may go out, as the Crusaders went of old, with absolute faith that their service will not be given in vain, that their effort and daring will not be unavailing.

[signed] Myron Herrick

The Hero's Peace

There is a peace that springs where battles thunder,
  Unknown to those who walk the ways of peace
  Drowsy with safety, praising soft release
From pain and strife and the discomfortable wonder
Of life lived vehemently to its last, wild flame:
  This peace thinks not of safety, is not bound
To the wincing flesh, nor to the piteous round
Of human hopes and memories, nor to Fame.

Immutable and immortal it is born
  Within the spirit that has looked on fear
  Till fear has looked askance; on death has gazed
As on an equal, and with noble scorn,
Spurning the self that held the self too dear,
  To the height of being mounts calm and unamazed.

[signed] Amelie Rives (Princess Troubetzkoy)

Castle Hill, Virginia