That's Marriage

by Edna Ferber

Theresa Platt (she had been Terry Sheehan) watched her husbandacross the breakfast table with eyes that smoldered. But OrvillePlatt was quite unaware of any smoldering in progress. He wasoccupied with his eggs. How could he know that these very eggswere feeding the dull red menace in Terry Platt's eyes?When Orville Platt ate a soft-boiled egg he concentrated on it.He treated it as a great adventure. Which, after all, it is.Few adjuncts of our daily life contain the element of chance thatis to be found in a three-minute breakfast egg.This was Orville Platt's method of attack: first, he chipped offthe top, neatly. Then he bent forward and subjected it to apassionate and relentless scrutiny. Straightening--preparatoryto plunging his spoon therein--he flapped his right elbow. Itwasn't exactly a flap; it was a pass between a hitch and a flap,and presented external evidence of a mental state. Orville Plattalways gave that little preliminary jerk when he wascontemplating a serious step, or when he was moved, orargumentative. It was a trick as innocent as it was maddening.Terry Platt had learned to look for that flap--they had beenmarried four years--to look for it, and to hate it with a morbid,unreasoning hate. That flap of the elbow was tearing TerryPlatt's nerves into raw, bleeding fragments.Her fingers were clenched tightly under the table, now. She wasbreathing unevenly. "If he does that again," she told herself,"if he flaps again when he opens the second egg, I'll scream.I'll scream. I'll scream! I'll sc----"He had scooped the first egg into his cup. Now he picked up thesecond, chipped it, concentrated, straightened, then--up went theelbow, and down, with the accustomed little flap.The tortured nerves snapped. Through the early-morning quiet ofWetona, Wisconsin, hurtled the shrill, piercing shriek of TerryPlatt's hysteria."Terry! For God's sake! What's the matter!"Orville Platt dropped the second egg, and his spoon. The eggyolk trickled down his plate. The spoon made a clatter and flunga gay spot of yellow on the cloth. He started toward her.Terry, wild-eyed, pointed a shaking finger at him. She waslaughing, now, uncontrollably. "Your elbow! Your elbow!""Elbow?" He looked down at it, bewildered, then up, fright inhis face. "What's the matter with it?"She mopped her eyes. Sobs shook her. "You f-f-flapped it.""F-f-f----" The bewilderment in Orville Platt's face gave wayto anger. "Do you mean to tell me that you screeched like thatbecause my--because I moved my elbow?""Yes."His anger deepened and reddened to fury. He choked. He hadstarted from his chair with his napkin in his hand. He stillclutched it. Now he crumpled it into a wad and hurled it to thecenter of the table, where it struck a sugar bowl, dropped back,and uncrumpled slowly, reprovingly. "You--you----" Thenbewilderment closed down again like a fog over his countenance."But why? I can't see----""Because it--because I can't stand it any longer. Flapping.This is what you do. Like this."And she did it. Did it with insulting fidelity, being a clevermimic."Well, all I can say is you're crazy, yelling like that, fornothing.""It isn't nothing.""Isn't, huh? If that isn't nothing, what is?" They weregrowing incoherent. "What d'you mean, screeching like a maniac?Like a wild woman? The neighbors'll think I've killed you. Whatd'you mean, anyway!""I mean I'm tired of watching it, that's what. Sick andtired.""Y'are, huh? Well, young lady, just let me tell YOUsomething----"He told her. There followed one of those incredible quarrels, assickening as they are human, which can take place only betweentwo people who love each other; who love each other so well thateach knows with cruel certainty the surest way to wound theother; and who stab, and tear, and claw at these vulnerable spotsin exact proportion to their love.Ugly words. Bitter words. Words that neither knew they knewflew between them like sparks between steel striking steel.From him: "Trouble with you is you haven't got enough to do.That's the trouble with half you women. Just lay around thehouse, rotting. I'm a fool, slaving on the road to keep agood-for-nothing----""I suppose you call sitting around hotel lobbies slaving! Isuppose the house runs itself! How about my evenings? Sittinghere alone, night after night, when you're on the road."Finally, "Well, if you don't like it," he snarled, and liftedhis chair by the back and slammed it down, savagely, "if youdon't like it, why don't you get out, hm? Why don't you getout?"And from her, her eyes narrowed to two slits, her cheeks scarlet:"Why, thanks. I guess I will."Ten minutes later he had flung out of the house to catch the 8:19for Manitowoc. He marched down the street, his shouldersswinging rhythmically to the weight of the burden he carried--hisblack leather handbag and the shiny tan sample case,battle-scarred, both, from many encounters with ruthless portersand busmen and bellboys. For four years, as he left for hissemi-monthly trip, he and Terry had observed a certain littleceremony (as had the neighbors). She would stand in the doorway,watching him down the street, the heavier sample case bangingoccasionally at his shin. The depot was only three blocks away.Terry watched him with fond but unillusioned eyes, which provesthat she really loved him. He was a dapper, well-dressed fatman, with a weakness for pronounced patterns in suitings, andaddicted to derbies. One week on the road, one week at home.That was his routine. The wholesale grocery trade liked Platt,and he had for his customers the fondness that a travelingsalesman has who is successful in his territory. Before hismarriage to Terry Sheehan his little red address book had beenoverwhelming proof against the theory that nobody loves a fatman.Terry, standing in the doorway, always knew that when he reachedthe corner just where Schroeder's house threatened to hide himfrom view, he would stop, drop the sample case, wave his handjust once, pick up the sample case and go on, proceeding backwardfor a step or two until Schroeder's house made good its threat.It was a comic scene in the eyes of the onlooker, perhaps becausea chubby Romeo offends the sense of fitness. The neighbors,lurking behind their parlor curtains, had laughed at first. Butafter a while they learned to look for that little scene, and totake it unto themselves, as if it were a personal thing.Fifteen-year wives whose husbands had long since abandonedflowery farewells used to get a vicarious thrill out of it, andto eye Terry with a sort of envy.This morning Orville Platt did not even falter when he reachedSchroeder's corner. He marched straight on, looking steadilyahead, the heavy bags swinging from either hand. Even if he hadstopped--though she knew he wouldn't--Terry Platt would not haveseen him. She remained seated at the disordered breakfast table,a dreadfully still figure, and sinister; a figure of stone andfire, of ice and flame. Over and over in her mind she wasmilling the things she might have said to him, and had not. Shebrewed a hundred vitriolic cruelties that she might have flung inhis face. She would concoct one biting brutality, and dismiss itfor a second, and abandon that for a third. She was too angry tocry--a dangerous state in a woman. She was what is known as coldmad, so that her mind was working clearly and with amazingswiftness, and yet as though it were a thing detached; a thingthat was no part of her.She sat thus for the better part of an hour, motionless exceptfor one forefinger that was, quite unconsciously, tapping out apopular and cheap little air that she had been strumming at thepiano the evening before, having bought it downtown that sameafternoon. It had struck Orville's fancy, and she had played itover and over for him. Her right forefinger was playing theentire tune, and something in the back of her head was followingit accurately, though the separate thinking process was going onjust the same. Her eyes were bright, and wide, and hot.Suddenly she became conscious of the musical antics of herfinger. She folded it in with its mates, so that her hand becamea fist. She stood up and stared down at the clutter of thebreakfast table. The egg--that fateful second egg--had congealedto a mottled mess of yellow and white. The spoon lay on thecloth. His coffee, only half consumed, showed tan with a coldgray film over it. A slice of toast at the left of his plateseemed to grin at her with the semi-circular wedge that he hadbitten out of it.Terry stared down at these congealing remnants. Then shelaughed, a hard high little laugh, pushed a plate awaycontemptuously with her hand, and walked into the sitting room.On the piano was the piece of music (Bennie Gottschalk's greatsong hit, "Hicky Boola") which she had been playing the nightbefore. She picked it up, tore it straight across, once, placedthe pieces back to back, and tore it across again. Then shedropped the pieces to the floor."You bet I'm going," she said, as though concluding a train ofthought. "You just bet I'm going. Right now!" And Terry went.She went for much the same reason as that given by the ladye ofhigh degree in the old English song--she who had left her lordand bed and board to go with the raggle-taggle gipsies-O! Thething that was sending Terry Platt away was much more than aconjugal quarrel precipitated by a soft-boiled egg and a flap ofthe arm. It went so deep that it is necessary to delve back tothe days when Theresa Platt was Terry Sheehan to get the realsignificance of it, and of the things she did after she went.When Mrs. Orville Platt had been Terry Sheehan, she had playedthe piano, afternoons and evenings, in the orchestra of the BijouTheater, on Cass Street, Wetona, Wisconsin. Anyone with a namelike Terry Sheehan would, perforce, do well anything she mightset out to do. There was nothing of genius in Terry, but therewas something of fire, and much that was Irish. Which meant thatthe Watson Team, Eccentric Song and Dance Artists, never needed arehearsal when they played the Bijou. Ruby Watson used merely toapproach Terry before the Monday performance, sheet music inhand, and say, "Listen, dearie. We've got some new business Iwant to wise you to. Right here it goes `TUM dee-dee DUM dee-deeTUM DUM DUM.' See? Like that. And then Jim vamps. Get me?"Terry, at the piano, would pucker her pretty brow a moment.Then, "Like this, you mean?""That's it! You've got it.""All right. I'll tell the drum."She could play any tune by ear, once heard. She got the spiritof a thing, and transmitted it. When Terry played a martialnumber you tapped the floor with your foot, and unconsciouslystraightened your shoulders. When she played a home-and-mothersong you hoped that the man next to you didn't know you werecrying (which he probably didn't, because he was weeping, too).At that time motion pictures had not attained their presentvirulence. Vaudeville, polite or otherwise, had not yet beencrowded out by the ubiquitous film. The Bijou offeredentertainment of the cigar-box-tramp variety, interspersed withtrick bicyclists, soubrettes in slightly soiled pink, trainedseals, and Family Fours with lumpy legs who tossed each otherabout and struck Goldbergian attitudes.Contact with these gave Terry Sheehan a semiprofessional tone.The more conservative of her townspeople looked at her askance.There never had been an evil thing about Terry, but Wetonaconsidered her rather fly. Terry's hair was very black, and shehad a fondness for those little, close-fitting scarlet turbans.Terry's mother had died when the girl was eight, and Terry'sfather had been what is known as easygoing. A good-natured,lovable, shiftless chap in the contracting business. He drovearound Wetona in a sagging, one-seated cart and never made anymoney because he did honest work and charged as little for it asmen who did not. His mortar stuck, and his bricks did notcrumble, and his lumber did not crack. Riches are not acquired inthe contracting business in that way. Ed Sheehan and hisdaughter were great friends. When he died (she was nineteen)they say she screamed once, like a banshee, and dropped to thefloor.After they had straightened out the muddle of books in EdSheehan's gritty, dusty little office Terry turned herpiano-playing talent to practical account. At twenty-one she wasstill playing at the Bijou, and into her face was creeping thefirst hint of that look of sophistication which comes from dailycontact with the artificial world of the footlights.There are, in a small Midwest town like Wetona, just two kinds ofgirls. Those who go downtown Saturday nights, and those whodon't. Terry, if she had not been busy with her job at the Bijou,would have come in the first group. She craved excitement.There was little chance to satisfy such craving in Wetona, butshe managed to find certain means. The traveling men from theBurke House just across the street used to drop in at the Bijoufor an evening's entertainment. They usually sat well toward thefront, and Terry's expert playing, and the gloss of her blackhair, and her piquant profile as she sometimes looked up towardthe stage for a signal from one of the performers caught theirfancy, and held it.She found herself, at the end of a year or two, with a ratherlarge acquaintance among these peripatetic gentlemen. Youoccasionally saw one of them strolling home with her. Sometimesshe went driving with one of them of a Sunday afternoon. And sherather enjoyed taking Sunday dinner at the Burke Hotel with afavored friend. She thought those small-town hotel Sundaydinners the last word in elegance. The roast course was alwaysaccompanied by an aqueous, semifrozen concoction which the billof fare revealed as Roman Punch. It added a royal touch to therepast, even when served with roast pork.Terry was twenty-two when Orville Platt, making his initialWisconsin trip for the wholesale grocery house he represented,first beheld her piquant Irish profile, and heard her deftmanipulation of the keys. Orville had the fat man's sense ofrhythm and love of music. He had a buttery tenor voice, too, ofwhich he was rather proud.He spent three days in Wetona that first trip, and every eveningsaw him at the Bijou, first row, center. He stayed through twoshows each time, and before he had been there fifteen minutesTerry was conscious of him through the back of her head. OrvillePlatt paid no more heed to the stage, and what was occurringthereon, than if it had not been. He sat looking at Terry, andwaggling his head in time to the music. Not that Terry was abeauty. But she was one of those immaculately clean types. Thatlook of fragrant cleanliness was her chief charm. Her clear,smooth skin contributed to it, and the natural penciling of hereyebrows. But the thing that accented it, and gave it a lasttouch, was the way in which her black hair came down in a littlepoint just in the center of her forehead, where hair meets brow.It grew to form what is known as a cowlick. (A prettier name forit is widow's peak.) Your eye lighted on it, pleased, and fromit traveled its gratified way down her white temples, past herlittle ears, to the smooth black coil at the nape of her neck.It was a trip that rested you.At the end of the last performance on the night of his secondvisit to the Bijou, Orville waited until the audience had begunto file out. Then he leaned forward over the rail that separatedorchestra from audience."Could you," he said, his tones dulcet, "could you oblige mewith the name of that last piece you played?"Terry was stacking her music. "George!" she called to thedrum. "Gentleman wants to know the name of that last piece."And prepared to leave."`My Georgia Crackerjack,'" said the laconic drum.Orville Platt took a hasty side step in the direction of the doortoward which Terry was headed. "It's a pretty thing," he saidfervently. "An awful pretty thing. Thanks. It's beautiful."Terry flung a last insult at him over her shoulder: "Don'tthank ME for it. I didn't write it."Orville Platt did not go across the street to the hotel. Hewandered up Cass Street, and into the ten-o'clock quiet of MainStreet, and down as far as the park and back. "Pretty as apink! And play! . . . And good, too. Good."A fat man in love.At the end of six months they were married. Terry was surprisedinto it. Not that she was not fond of him. She was; andgrateful to him, as well. For, pretty as she was, no man hadever before asked Terry to be his wife. They had made love toher. They had paid court to her. They had sent her large boxesof stale drugstore chocolates, and called her endearing names asthey made cautious declarations such as:"I've known a lot of girls, but you've got something different.I don't know. You've got so much sense. A fellow can chumaround with you. Little pal."Wetona would be their home. They rented a comfortable,seven-room house in a comfortable, middle-class neighborhood, andTerry dropped the red velvet turbans and went in for picturehats. Orville bought her a piano whose tone was so good that toher ear, accustomed to the metallic discords of the Bijouinstrument, it sounded out of tune. She played a great deal atfirst, but unconsciously she missed the sharp spat of applausethat used to follow her public performance. She would play apiece, brilliantly, and then her hands would drop to her lap.And the silence of her own sitting room would fall flat on herears. It was better on the evenings when Orville was home. Hesang, in his throaty, fat man's tenor, to Terry's expertaccompaniment."This is better than playing for those ham actors, isn't it,hon?" And he would pinch her ear."Sure"--listlessly.But after the first year she became accustomed to what she termedprivate life. She joined an afternoon sewing club, and wasactive in the ladies' branch of the U.C.T. She developed a knackat cooking, too, and Orville, after a week or ten days of hotelfare in small Wisconsin towns, would come home to sea-foambiscuits, and real soup, and honest pies and cake. Sometimes, inthe midst of an appetizing meal he would lay down his knife andfork and lean back in his chair, and regard the cool andunruffled Terry with a sort of reverence in his eyes. Then hewould get up, and come around to the other side of the table, andtip her pretty face up to his."I'll bet I'll wake up, someday, and find out it's all a dream.You know this kind of thing doesn't really happen--not to a dublike me."One year; two; three; four. Routine. A little boredom. Someimpatience. She began to find fault with the very things she hadliked in him: his superneatness; his fondness for dashing suitpatterns; his throaty tenor; his worship of her. And the flap.Oh, above all, that flap! That little, innocent, meaninglessmannerism that made her tremble with nervousness. She hated itso that she could not trust herself to speak of it to him. Thatwas the trouble. Had she spoken of it, laughingly or in earnest,before it became an obsession with her, that hideous breakfastquarrel, with its taunts, and revilings, and open hate, mightnever have come to pass.Terry Platt herself didn't know what was the matter with her.She would have denied that anything was wrong. She didn't eventhrow her hands above her head and shriek: "I want to live! Iwant to live! I want to live!" like a lady in a play. She onlyknew she was sick of sewing at the Wetona West End Red Crossshop; sick of marketing, of home comforts, of Orville, of theflap.Orville, you may remember, left at 8:19. The 11:23 bore TerryChicago-ward. She had left the house as it was--beds unmade,rooms unswept, breakfast table uncleared. She intended never tocome back.Now and then a picture of the chaos she had left behind wouldflash across her order-loving mind. The spoon on the tablecloth.Orville's pajamas dangling over the bathroom chair. Thecoffeepot on the gas stove."Pooh! What do I care?"In her pocketbook she had a tidy sum saved out of thehousekeeping money. She was naturally thrifty, and Orville hadnever been niggardly. Her meals when Orville was on the road hadbeen those sketchy, haphazard affairs with which women contentthemselves when their household is manless. At noon she wentinto the dining car and ordered a flaunting little repast ofchicken salad and asparagus and Neapolitan ice cream. The men inthe dining car eyed her speculatively and with appreciation.Then their glance dropped to the third finger of her left hand,and wandered away. She had meant to remove it. In fact, she hadtaken it off and dropped it into her bag. But her hand felt soqueer, so unaccustomed, so naked, that she had found herselfslipping the narrow band on again, and her thumb groped for it,gratefully.It was almost five o'clock when she reached Chicago. She felt nouncertainty or bewilderment. She had been in Chicago three orfour times since her marriage. She went to a downtown hotel. Itwas too late, she told herself, to look for a less expensive roomthat night. When she had tidied herself she went out. Thethings she did were the childish, aimless things that one doeswho finds herself in possession of sudden liberty. She walked upState Street, and stared in the windows; came back, turned intoMadison, passed a bright little shop in the window of whichtaffy-white and gold-- was being wound endlessly andfascinatingly about a double-jointed machine. She went in andbought a sackful, and wandered on down the street, munching.She had supper at one of those white-tiled sarcophagi thatemblazon Chicago's downtown side streets. It had been heroriginal intention to dine in state in the rose-and-gold diningroom of her hotel. She had even thought daringly of lobster.But at the last moment she recoiled from the idea of dining alonein that wilderness of tables so obviously meant for two.After her supper she went to a picture show. She was amazed tofind there, instead of the accustomed orchestra, a pipe organthat panted and throbbed and rumbled over lugubrious classics.The picture was about a faithless wife. Terry left in the middleof it.She awoke next morning at seven, as usual, started up wildly,looked around, and dropped back. Nothing to get up for. Theknowledge did not fill her with a rush of relief. She would haveher breakfast in bed. She telephoned for it, languidly. Butwhen it came she got up and ate it from the table, after all.That morning she found a fairly comfortable room, more within hermeans, on the North Side in the boardinghouse district. Sheunpacked and hung up her clothes and drifted downtown again,idly. It was noon when she came to the corner of State andMadison Streets. It was a maelstrom that caught her up, andbuffeted her about, and tossed her helplessly this way and that.The thousands jostled Terry, and knocked her hat awry, and dugher with unheeding elbows, and stepped on her feet."Say, look here!" she said once futilely. They did not stop tolisten. State and Madison has no time for Terrys from Wetona.It goes its way, pell-mell. If it saw Terry at all it saw heronly as a prettyish person, in the wrong kind of suit and hat,with a bewildered, resentful look on her face.Terry drifted on down the west side of State Street, with thehurrying crowd. State and Monroe. A sound came to Terry's ears.A sound familiar, beloved. To her ear, harassed with the roarand crash, with the shrill scream of the whistle of the policemanat the crossing, with the hiss of feet shuffling on cement, itwas a celestial strain. She looked up, toward the sound. Agreat second-story window opened wide to the street. In it agirl at a piano, and a man, red-faced, singing through amegaphone. And on a flaring red and green sign:BERNIE GOTTSCHALK'S MUSIC HOUSE!COME IN! HEAR BERNIE GOTTSCHALK'S LATEST HIT!THE HEART-THROB SONG THAT HAS GOT 'EM ALL!THE SONG THAT MADE THE SQUAREHEADS CRAWL!"I COME FROM PARIS, ILLINOIS, BUT OH! YOU PARIS, FRANCE!I USED TO WEAR BLUE OVERALLS BUT NOW IT'S KHAKI PANTS."COME IN! COME IN!Terry accepted,She followed the sound of the music. Around the corner. Up alittle flight of stairs. She entered the realm of Euterpe;Euterpe with her hair frizzed; Euterpe with her flowing whiterobe replaced by soiled white shoes; Euterpe abandoning her flutefor jazz. She sat at the piano, a red- haired young lady whosefamiliarity with the piano had bred contempt. Nothing else couldhave accounted for her treatment of it. Her fingers, tipped withsharp-pointed and glistening nails, clawed the keys with adreadful mechanical motion. There were stacks of music sheets oncounters and shelves and dangling from overhead wires. The girlat the piano never ceased playing. She played mostly by request.A prospective purchaser would mumble something in the ear of oneof the clerks. The fat man with the megaphone would bawl out,"Hicky Boola, Miss Ryan!" And Miss Ryan would oblige. Shemade a hideous rattle and crash and clatter of sound.Terry joined the crowds about the counter. The girl at the pianowas not looking at the keys. Her head was screwed around overher left shoulder and as she played she was holding forthanimatedly to a girl friend who had evidently dropped in fromsome store or office during the lunch hour. Now and again thefat man paused in his vocal efforts to reprimand her for herslackness. She paid no heed. There was something gruesome,uncanny, about the way her fingers went their own way over thedefenseless keys. Her conversation with the frowzy little girlwent on."Wha'd he say?" (Over her shoulder.)"Oh, he laffed.""Well, didja go?""Me! Well, whutya think I yam, anyway?""I woulda took a chanst."The fat man rebelled."Look here! Get busy! What are you paid for? Talkin' orplayin'? Huh?"The person at the piano, openly reproved thus before her friend,lifted her uninspired hands from the keys and spake. When shehad finished she rose."But you can't leave now," the megaphone man argued. "Rightin the rush hour.""I'm gone," said the girl. The fat man looked about,helplessly. He gazed at the abandoned piano, as though it mustgo on of its own accord. Then at the crowd."Where's Miss Schwimmer?" he demanded of a clerk."Out to lunch."Terry pushed her way to the edge of the counter and leaned over."I can play for you," she said.The man looked at her. "Sight?""Yes.""Come on."Terry went around to the other side of the counter, took off herhat and coat, rubbed her hands together briskly, sat down, andbegan to play. The crowd edged closer.It is a curious study, this noonday crowd that gathers to sateits music hunger on the scraps vouchsafed it by BernieGottschalk's Music House. Loose-lipped, slope-shouldered youngmen with bad complexions and slender hands. Girls whose clothesare an unconscious satire on present-day fashions. On theirfaces, as they listen to the music, is a look of peace anddreaming. They stand about, smiling a wistful half smile. Themusic seems to satisfy a something within them. Faces dull, eyeslusterless, they listen in a sort of trance.Terry played on. She played as Terry Sheehan used to play. Sheplayed as no music hack at Bernie Gottschalk's had ever playedbefore. The crowd swayed a little to the sound of it. Some kepttime with little jerks of the shoulder--the little hitchingmovement of the dancer whose blood is filled with the fever ofsyncopation. Even the crowd flowing down State Street must havecaught the rhythm of it, for the room soon filled.At two o'clock the crowd began to thin. Business would be slack,now, until five, when it would again pick up until closing timeat six. The fat vocalist put down his megaphone, wiped hisforehead, and regarded Terry with a warm blue eye. He had justfinished singing "I've Wandered Far from Dear Old Mother'sKnee." (Bernie Gottschalk Inc. Chicago. New York. You can'tget bit with a Gottschalk hit. 15 cents each.)"Girlie," he said, emphatically, "you sure--can--play!" Hecame over to her at the piano and put a stubby hand on hershoulder. "Yessir! Those little fingers----"Terry just turned her head to look down her nose at the moisthand resting on her shoulder. "Those little fingers are goingto meet your face if you don't move on.""Who gave you your job?" demanded the fat man."Nobody. I picked it myself. You can have it if you want it.""Can't you take a joke?""Label yours."As the crowd dwindled she played less feverishly, but there wasnothing slipshod about her performance. The chubby songsterfound time to proffer brief explanations in asides. "They wantthe patriotic stuff. It used to be all that Hawaiian dope, andWild Irish Rose stuff, and songs about wanting to go back toevery place from Dixie to Duluth. But now seems it's all thesehere flag wavers. Honestly, I'm so sick of 'em I got a notion toenlist to get away from it."Terry eyed him with withering briefness. "A little trainingwouldn't ruin your figure."She had never objected to Orville's embonpoint. But then,Orville was a different sort of fat man; pink-cheeked, springy,immaculate.At four o'clock, as she was in the chorus of "Isn't ThereAnother Joan of Arc?" a melting masculine voice from the otherside of the counter said "Pardon me. What's that you'replaying?"Terry told him. She did not look up. "I wouldn't have knownit. Played like that--a second `Marseillaise.' If thewords----What are the words? Let me see a----""Show the gentleman a `Joan,'" Terry commanded briefly, overher shoulder. The fat man laughed a wheezy laugh. Terry glancedaround, still playing, and encountered the gaze of two meltingmasculine eyes that matched the melting masculine voice. Thesongster waved a hand uniting Terry and the eyes in informalintroduction."Mr. Leon Sammett, the gentleman who sings the Gottschalk songswherever songs are heard. And Mrs.--that is--and Mrs.Sammett----"Terry turned. A sleek, swarthy world-old young man with thefashionable concave torso, and alarmingly convex bone-rimmedglasses. Through them his darkly luminous gaze glowed uponTerry. To escape their warmth she sent her own gaze past him toencounter the arctic stare of the large blonde who had beenincluded so lamely in the introduction. And at that thefrigidity of that stare softened, melted, dissolved."Why, Terry Sheehan! What in the world!"Terry's eyes bored beneath the layers of flabby fat. "It's--why,it's Ruby Watson, isn't it? Eccentric Song and Dance----"She glanced at the concave young man and faltered. He was notJim, of the Bijou days. From him her eyes leaped back to thefur-bedecked splendor of the woman. The plump face went sopainfully red that the make-up stood out on it, a distinct layer,like thin ice covering flowing water. As she surveyed that bulkTerry realized that while Ruby might still claim eccentricity,her song-and-dance days were over. "That's ancient history, m'dear. I haven't been working for three years. What're you doingin this joint? I'd heard you'd done well for yourself. That youwere married.""I am. That is I--well, I am. I----"At that the dark young man leaned over and patted Terry's handthat lay on the counter. He smiled. His own hand was incrediblyslender, long, and tapering."That's all right," he assured her, and smiled. "You twogirls can have a reunion later. What I want to know is can youplay by ear?""Yes, but----"He leaned far over the counter. "I knew it the minute I heardyou play. You've got the touch. Now listen. See if you can getthis, and fake the bass."He fixed his somber and hypnotic eyes on Terry. His mouthscrewed up into a whistle. The tune--a tawdry but hauntinglittle melody--came through his lips. Terry turned back to thepiano. "Of course you know you flatted every note," she said.This time it was the blonde who laughed, and the man whoflushed. Terry cocked her head just a little to one side, like aknowing bird, looked up into space beyond the piano top, andplayed the lilting little melody with charm and fidelity. Thedark young man followed her with a wagging of the head and littlejerks of both outspread hands. His expression was beatific,enraptured. He hummed a little under his breath and anyone whowas music-wise would have known that he was just a half beatbehind her all the way.When she had finished he sighed deeply, ecstatically. He benthis lean frame over the counter and, despite his swart coloring,seemed to glitter upon her--his eyes, his teeth, his veryfingernails."Something led me here. I never come up on Tuesdays. Butsomething----""You was going to complain," put in his lady, heavily, "aboutthat Teddy Sykes at the Palace Gardens singing the same songsthis week that you been boosting at the Inn."He put up a vibrant, peremptory hand. "Bah! What does thatmatter now! What does anything matter now! ListenMiss--ah--Miss----?""Pl-Sheehan. Terry Sheehan."He gazed off a moment into space. "Hm. `Leon Sammett in Songs.Miss Terry Sheehan at the Piano.' That doesn't sound bad. Nowlisten, Miss Sheehan. I'm singing down at the University Inn.The Gottschalk song hits. I guess you know my work. But I wantto talk to you, private. It's something to your interest. I goon down at the Inn at six. Will you come and have a littlesomething with Ruby and me? Now?""Now?" faltered Terry, somewhat helplessly. Things seemed tobe moving rather swiftly for her, accustomed as she was to thepeaceful routine of the past four years."Get your hat. It's your life chance. Wait till you see yourname in two- foot electrics over the front of every big-timehouse in the country. You've got music in you. Tie to me andyou're made." He turned to the woman beside him. "Isn't thatso, Rube?""Sure. Look at ME!" One would not have thought there could beso much subtle vindictiveness in a fat blonde.Sammett whipped out a watch. "Just three quarters of an hour.Come on, girlie."His conversation had been conducted in an urgent undertone, withside glances at the fat man with the megaphone. Terry approachedhim now."I'm leaving now," she said."Oh, no, you're not. Six o'clock is your quitting time."In which he touched the Irish in Terry. "Any time I quit is myquitting time. She went in quest of hat and coat much as thegirl had done whose place she had taken early in the day. Thefat man followed her, protesting. Terry, putting on her hat,tried to ignore him. But he laid one plump hand on her arm andkept it there, though she tried to shake him off."Now, listen to me. That boy wouldn't mind grinding his heel onyour face if he thought it would bring him up a step. I know'm.See that walking stick he's carrying? Well, compared to theyellow stripe that's in him, that cane is a Lead pencil. He's asong tout, that's all he is." Then, more feverishly, as Terrytried to pull away: "Wait a minute. You're a decent girl. Iwant to--Why, he can't even sing a note without you give it tohim first. He can put a song over, yes. But how? By flashingthat toothy grin of his and talking every word of it. Don'tyou----"But Terry freed herself with a final jerk and whipped around thecounter. The two, who had been talking together in an undertone,turned to welcome her. "We've got a half-hour. Come on. It'sjust over to Clark and up a block or so."The University Inn, that gloriously intercollegiate institutionwhich welcomes any graduate of any school of experience, wassituated in the basement, down a flight of stairs. Into theunwonted quiet that reigns during the hour of low potentiality,between five and six, the three went, and seated themselves at atable in an obscure corner. A waiter brought them things inlittle glasses, though no order had been given. The woman whohad been Ruby Watson was so silent as to be almost wordless. Butthe man talked rapidly. He talked well, too. The same qualitythat enabled him, voiceless though he was, to boost a song tosuccess was making his plea sound plausible in Terry's ears now."I've got to go and make up in a few minutes. So get this. I'mnot going to stick down in this basement eating house forever.I've got too much talent. If I only had a voice--I mean a singingvoice. But I haven't. But then, neither had Georgie Cohan, andI can't see that it wrecked his life any. Now listen. I've got asong. It's my own. That bit you played for me up atGottschalk's is part of the chorus. But it's the words that'llgo big. They're great. It's an aviation song, see? Airplanestuff. They're yelling that it's the airyoplanes that're goingto win this war. Well, I'll help 'em. This song is going to putthe aviator where he belongs. It's going to be the big song ofthe war. It's going to make `Tipperary' sound like a Moody andSankey hymn. It's the----"Ruby lifted her heavy-lidded eyes and sent him a meaning look."Get down to business, Leon. I'll tell her how good you arewhile you're making up."He shot her a malignant glance, but took her advice. "Now whatI've been looking for for years is somebody who has got the musicknack to give me the accompaniment just a quarter of a jump aheadof my voice, see? I can follow like a lamb, but I've got to havethat feeler first. It's more than a knack. It's a gift. Andyou've got it. I know it when I see it. I want to get away fromthis night-club thing. There's nothing in it for a man of mytalent. I'm gunning for bigger game. But they won't sign mewithout a tryout. And when they hear my voice they---- Well, ifme and you work together we can fool 'em. The song's great. Andmy make-up's one of these aviation costumes to go with the song,see? Pants tight in the knee and baggy on the hips. And a coatwith one of those full-skirt whaddyoucall- 'ems----""Peplums," put in Ruby, placidly."Sure. And the girls'll be wild about it. And the words!" Hebegan to sing, gratingly off key:Put on your sky clothes,Put on your fly clothes,And take a trip with me.We'll sail so highUp in the skyWe'll drop a bomb from Mercury."Why, that's awfully cute!" exclaimed Terry. Until now heropinion of Mr. Sammett's talents had not been on a level withhis."Yeah, but wait till you hear the second verse. That's onlypart of the chorus. You see, he's supposed to be talking to aFrench girl. He says:`I'll parlez-vous in Francais plainYou'll answer, "Cher Americain,"We'll both . . .'"The six-o'clock lights blazed up suddenly. A sad-looking groupof men trailed in and made for a corner where certain bulky,shapeless bundles were soon revealed as those glittering andtortuous instruments which go to make a jazz band."You better go, Lee. The crowd comes in awful early now, withall these buyers in town."Both hands on the table, he half rose, reluctantly, stilltalking. "I've got three other songs. They make Gottschalk'sstuff look sick. All I want's a chance. What I want you to dois accompaniment. On the stage, see? Grand piano. And a swellset. I haven't quite made up my mind to it. But a kind of anarmy camp room, see? And maybe you dressed as Liberty. Anyway,it'll be new, and a knockout. If only we can get away with thevoice thing. Say, if Eddie Foy, all those years never hada----"The band opened with a terrifying clash of cymbal and thump ofdrum. "Back at the end of my first turn," he said as he Red.Terry followed his lithe, electric figure. She turned to meetthe heavy-lidded gaze of the woman seated opposite. She relaxed,then, and sat back with a little sigh. "Well! If he talks thatway to the managers I don't see----"Ruby laughed a mirthless little laugh. "Talk doesn't get itover with the managers, honey. You've got to deliver.""Well, but he's--that song is a good one. I don't say it's asgood as he thinks it is, but it's good.""Yes," admitted the woman, grudgingly, "it's good.""Well, then?"The woman beckoned a waiter; he nodded and vanished, andreappeared with a glass that was twin to the one she had justemptied. "Does he look like he knew French? Or could make arhyme?""But didn't he? Doesn't he?""The words were written by a little French girl who used toskate down here last winter, when the craze was on. She wasstuck on a Chicago kid who went over to fly for the French.""But the music?""There was a Russian girl who used to dance in the cabaret andshe----"Terry's head came up with a characteristic little jerk. "Idon't believe it!""Better." She gazed at Terry with the drowsy look that was sodifferent from the quick, clear glance of the Ruby Watson whoused to dance so nimbly in the old Bijou days. "What'd you andyour husband quarrel about, Terry?"Terry was furious to feel herself flushing. "Oh, nothing. Hejust--I--it was---- Say, how did you know we'd quarreled?"And suddenly all the fat woman's apathy dropped from her like agarment and some of the old sparkle and animation illumined herheavy face. She pushed her glass aside and leaned forward on herfolded arms, so that her face was close to Terry's."Terry Sheehan, I know you've quarreled, and I know just what itwas about. Oh, I don't mean the very thing it was about; but thekind of thing. I'm going to do something for you, Terry, that Iwouldn't take the trouble to do for most women. But I guess Iain't had all the softness knocked out of me yet, though it's awonder. And I guess I remember too plain the decent kid you wasin the old days. What was the name of that little small-timehouse me and Jim used to play? Bijou, that's it; Bijou."The band struck up a new tune. Leon Sammett--slim, sleek, lithein his evening clothes--appeared with a little fair girl in pinkchiffon. The woman reached across the table and put one pudgy,jeweled hand on Terry's arm. "He'll be through in ten minutes.Now listen to me. I left Jim four years ago, and there hasn'tbeen a minute since then, day or night, when I wouldn't havecrawled back to him on my hands and knees if I could. But Icouldn't. He wouldn't have me now. How could he? How do I knowyou've quarreled? I can see it in your eyes. They look just theway mine have felt for four years, that's how. I met up withthis boy, and there wasn't anybody to do the turn for me that I'mtrying to do for you. Now get this. I left Jim because when heate corn on the cob he always closed his eyes and it drove mewild. Don't laugh.""I'm not laughing," said Terry."Women are like that. One night--we was playing Fond du Lac; Iremember just as plain--we was eating supper before the show andJim reached for one of those big yellow ears, and buttered andsalted it, and me kind of hanging on to the edge of the tablewith my nails. Seemed to me if he shut his eyes when he put histeeth into that ear of corn I'd scream. And he did. And Iscreamed. And that's all."Terry sat staring at her with a wide-eyed stare, like asleepwalker. Then she wet her lips slowly. "But that's almostthe very----""Kid, go on back home. I don't know whether it's too late ornot, but go anyway. If you've lost him I suppose it ain't anymore than you deserve; but I hope to God you don't get yourdeserts this time. He's almost through. If he sees you going hecan't quit in the middle of his song to stop you. He'll know Iput you wise, and he'll prob'ly half kill me for it. But it'sworth it. You get."And Terry--dazed, shaking, but grateful--fled. Down the noisyaisle, up the stairs, to the street. Back to her rooming house.Out again, with her suitcase, and into the right railroad stationsomehow, at last. Not another Wetona train until midnight. Sheshrank into a remote corner of the waiting room and there shehuddled until midnight, watching the entrances like a child whois fearful of ghosts in the night.The hands of the station clock seemed fixed and immovable. Thehour between eleven and twelve was endless. She was on thetrain. It was almost morning. It was morning. Dawn wasbreaking. She was home! She had the house key clutched tightlyin her hand long before she turned Schroeder's corner. Supposehe had come home! Suppose he had jumped a town and come homeahead of his schedule. They had quarreled once before, and hehad done that.Up the front steps. Into the house. Not a sound. She stoodthere a moment in the early-morning half-light. She peered intothe dining room. The table, with its breakfast debris, was asshe had left it. In the kitchen the coffeepot stood on the gasstove. She was home. She was safe. She ran up the stairs, gotout of her clothes and into gingham morning things. She flungopen windows everywhere. Downstairs once more she plunged intoan orgy of cleaning. Dishes, table, stove, floor, rugs. Shewashed, scoured, swabbed, polished. By eight o'clock she haddone the work that would ordinarily have taken until noon. Thehouse was shining, orderly, and redolent of soapsuds.During all this time she had been listening, listening, with hersubconscious ear. Listening for something she had refused toname definitely in her mind, but listening, just the same;waiting.And then, at eight o'clock, it came. The rattle of a key in thelock. The boom of the front door. Firm footsteps.He did not go to meet her, and she did not go to meet him. Theycame together and were in each other's arms. She was weeping."Now, now, old girl. What's there to cry about? Don't, honey;don't. It's all right." She raised her head then, to look athim. How fresh and rosy and big he seemed, after that littlesallow restaurant rat."How did you get here? How did you happen----?""Jumped all the way from Ashland. Couldn't get a sleeper, so Isat up all night. I had to come back and square things with you,Terry. My mind just wasn't on my work. I kept thinking how I'dtalked--how I'd talked----""Oh, Orville, don't! I can't bear---- Have you had yourbreakfast?""Why, no. The train was an hour late. You know that Ashlandtrain."But she was out of his arms and making for the kitchen. "You goand clean up. I'll have hot biscuits and everything in no time.You poor boy. No breakfast!"She made good her promise. It could not have been more than halfan hour later when he was buttering his third feathery,golden-brown biscuit. But she had eaten nothing. She watchedhim, and listened, and again her eyes were somber, but for adifferent reason. He broke open his egg. His elbow came up justa fraction of an inch. Then he remembered, and flushed like aschoolboy, and brought it down again, carefully. And at that shegave a tremulous cry, and rushed around the table to him."Oh, Orville!" She took the offending elbow in her two arms,and bent and kissed the rough coat sleeve."Why, Terry! Don't, honey. Don't!""Oh, Orville, listen----""Yes.""Listen, Orville----""I'm listening, Terry.""I've got something to tell you. There's something you've gotto know.""Yes, I know it, Terry. I knew you'd out with it, pretty soon,if I just waited."She lifted an amazed face from his shoulder then, and stared athim. "But how could you know? You couldn't! How could you?"He patted her shoulder then, gently. "I can always tell. Whenyou have something on your mind you always take up a spoon ofcoffee, and look at it, and kind of joggle it back and forth inthe spoon, and then dribble it back into the cup again, withoutonce tasting it. It used to get me nervous, when we were firstmarried, watching you. But now I know it just means you'reworried about something, and I wait, and pretty soon----""Oh, Orville!" she cried then. "Oh, Orville!""Now, Terry. Just spill it, hon. Just spill it to Daddy. Andyou'll feel better."

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