We Cant Have Everything | Page 7

in contortion. She was entranced by the wash-room with its hot and cold water and its basin of apparent silver, whose contents did not have to be lifted and splashed into a slop-jar, but magically emptied themselves at the raising of a medallion.
She had not worn herself out with enthusiasm by the time the first night was spent and half the next day. She pressed her nose against the window and ached with regret at the hurry with which towns and cities were whipped away from her eyes.
She did not care for grass and trees and cows and dull villages, but she thrilled at the beauty of big, dark railroad stations and noble street-cars and avenues paved with exquisite asphalt.
The train was late in arriving at New York, and it was nearer ten than eight when it roared across the Harlem River. Kedzie was glad of the display, for she saw the town first as one great light-spangled banner.
The car seemed to be drawn right through people's rooms. Everybody lived up-stairs. She caught glimpses of kitchens on the fourth floor and she thought this adorable, except that it would be a job carrying the wood all the way up.
The streets went by like the glistening spokes of a swift wheel. They were packed with interesting sights. No wonder most of the inhabitants were either in the streets or leaning out of the windows looking down. Here it was ten o'clock, and not a sign of anybody's having thought of going to bed. New York was a sensible place. She liked New York.
But the train seemed to quicken its pace out of mere spitefulness just as they reached wonderful market streets with flaring lights over little carts all filled with things to buy.
When the wonder world was blotted from view by the tunnel it frightened her at first with its long, dark noise and the flip-flops of light. Then a brief glimpse of towers and walls. Then the dark station. And they were There!

CHAPTER IV
Jim Dyckman had always loved Charity Coe, but he let another man marry her--a handsomer, livelier, more entertaining man with whom Dyckman was afraid to compete. A mingling of laziness and of modesty disarmed him.
As soon as he saw how tempestuously Peter Cheever began his courtship, Dyckman withdrew from Miss Coe's entourage. When she asked him why, he said, frankly:
"Pete Cheever's got me beat. I know when I'm licked."
Pete's courtship was what the politicians call a whirlwind campaign. Charity was Mrs. Cheever before she knew it. Her friends continued to call her Charity Coe, but she was very much married.
Cheever was a man of shifting ardors. His soul was filled with automatic fire-extinguishers. He flared up quickly, but when his temperature reached a certain degree, sprinklers of cold water opened in his ceiling and doused the blaze, leaving him unharmed and hardly scorched. It had been so with his loves.
After a brief and blissful honeymoon, Peter Cheever's capricious soul kindled at the thought of an exploration of war-filled Europe. His blushing bride was a hurdle-rider, too, and loved a risk-neck venture. She insisted on going with him.
He accepted the steering-wheel of a motor-ambulance and left his bride to her own devices while he shot along the poplar-plumed roads of France at lightning speed.
Charity drifted into hospital service. Her first soldier, the tortured victim of a gas-attack, was bewailing the fate of his motherless child. Charity brought a smile to what lips he had by whispering:
"I am rich. I will adopt your little girl."
It was the first time she had ever boasted of being rich. The man died, whispering: "Merci, Madame! Merci, Madame!" Another father was writhing in the premature hell of leaving a shy little unprotected boy to starve. Charity promised to care for him, too.
At a 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