We Cant Have Everything | Page 8

committee meeting, a week later, she learned of a horde of war
orphans and divided them up with Muriel Schuyler, Mrs. Perry
Merithew, and other American angels abroad.
When Charity's husband wearied of being what he called "chauffeur to
a butcher-wagon," he decided that America was a pretty good country,
after all. But Charity could not tear herself away from her privilege of
suffering, even to follow her bridegroom home. He had cooled to her
also, and he made no protest. He promised to come back for her. He did
not come. He cabled often and devotedly, telling her how lonely he was
and how busy. She answered that she hoped he was lonely, but she
knew he was busy. He would be!
When Cheever first returned, Jim Dyckman saw him at a club. He saw
him afterward in a restaurant with one of those astonishing animals
which the moving pictures have hardly caricatured as a "vampire." This
one would have been impossible if she had not been visible. She was
intensely visible.
Jim Dyckman felt that her mere presence in a public restaurant was
offensive. To think of her as displacing Charity Coe in Cheever's
attentions was maddening. He understood for the first time why people
of a sort write anonymous letters. He could not stoop to that

degradation, and yet he wondered if, after all, it would be as degrading
to play the informer as to be an unprotesting and therefore accessory
spectator and confidant.
Gossip began to deal in the name of Cheever. One day at a club the
he-old-maid "Prissy" Atterbury cackled:
"I saw Pete Cheever at a cabaret--"
Jim asked, anxiously, "Was he alone?"
"Nearly."
"What do you mean--nearly alone?"
"Well, what he had with him is my idea of next to nothing. I wonder
what sinking ship Cheever rescued her from. They tell me she was a
cabaret dancer named Zada L'Etoile--that's French for Sadie Starr, I
suppose."
Dyckman's obsession escaped him.
"Somebody ought to write his wife about it."
"That would be nice!" cried Prissy. "Oh, very, very nice! It would be
better to notify the Board of Health. But it would be still better if his
wife would come home and mind her own business. These Americans
who hang about the edges of the war, fishing for sensations, make me
very tired--oh, very, very tired."
Prissy never knew how near he was to annihilation. Jim had to hold one
fist with the other. He was afraid to yield to his impulse to smash Prissy
in the droop of his mustache. Prissy was too frail to be slugged. That
was his chief protection in his gossip-mongering career.
Besides, it is a questionable courtesy for a former beau to defend
another man's wife's name, and Dyckman proved his devotion to
Charity best by leaving her slanderer unrebuked.

It was no anonymous better that brought Charity Coe home. It was the
breakdown of her powers of resistance. Even the soldiers had to be
granted vacations from the trenches; and so an eminent American
surgeon in charge of the hospital she adorned finally drove Mrs.
Cheever back to America. He disguised his solicitude with brutality; he
told her he did not want her to die on their hands.
When Charity came back, Cheever met her and celebrated her return.
She was a new sensation to him again for a week or two, but her need
of seclusion and quiet drove him frantic and he grew busy once more.
He recalled Miss L'Etoile from the hardships of dancing for her supper.
Unlike Charity, Zada never failed to be exciting. Cheever was never
sure what she would do or say or throw next. She was delicious.
When Dyckman learned of Cheever's extra establishment it enraged
him. He had let Cheever push him aside and carry off Charity Coe, and
now he must watch Cheever push Charity Coe aside and carry on the
next choice of his whims.
To Dyckman, Charity was perfection. To lose her and find her in the
ash-barrel with Cheever's other discarded dolls was intolerable. Yet
what could Dyckman do about it? He dared not even meet Charity. He
hated her husband, and he knew that her husband hated him. Cheever
somehow realized the dogged fidelity of Dyckman's love for Charity
and resented it--feared it as a menace, perhaps.
Dyckman had two or three narrow escapes from running into Charity,
and he finally took to his heels. He lingered in the Canadian wilds till
he thought it safe to return. And now she chanced to board the same
train. The problem he had run away from had cornered him.
He had cherished a sneaking hope that she would learn the truth
somehow before he met her. He was not sure what she ought to do
when she