Tales of the Jazz Age

Again there was a pause, broken this time by a low question from Roxanne.

'Do you ever hear of her, Harry?'

'Why--yes,' he admitted placidly. 'She's in Seattle. She's married again to a man named Horton, a sort of lumber king. He's a great deal older than she is, I believe.'

'And she's behaving?'

'Yes--that is, I've heard so. She has everything, you see. Nothing much to do except dress up for this fellow at dinner-time.'

'I see.'

Without effort he changed the subject.

'Are you going to keep the house?'

'I think so,' she said, nodding. 'I've lived here so long, Harry, it'd seem terrible to move. I thought of trained nursing, but of course that'd mean leaving. I've about decided to be a boarding-house lady.'

'Live in one?'

'No. Keep one. Is there such an anomaly as a boarding-house lady? Anyway I'd have a negress and keep about eight people in the summer and two or three, if I can get them, in the winter. Of course I'll have to have the house repainted and gone over inside.'

Harry considered.

'Roxanne, why--naturally you know best what you can do, but it does seem a shock, Roxanne. You came here as a bride.'

'Perhaps,' she said, 'that's why I don't mind remaining here as a boarding-house lady.'

'I remember a certain batch of biscuits.'

'Oh, those biscuits,' she cried. 'Still, from all I heard about the way you devoured them, they couldn't have been so bad. I was so low that day, yet somehow I laughed when the nurse told me about those biscuits.'

'I noticed that the twelve nail-holes are still in the library wall where Jeff drove them.'

'Yes.'

It was getting very dark now, a crispness settled in the air; a little gust of wind sent down a last spray of leaves. Roxanne shivered slightly.

'We'd better go in.'

He looked at his watch.

'It's late. I've got to be leaving. I go East tomorrow.'

'Must you?'

They lingered for a moment just below the stoop, watching a moon that seemed full of snow float out of the distance where the lake lay. Summer was gone and now Indian summer. The grass was cold and there was no mist and no dew. After he left she would go in and light the gas and close the shatters, and he would go down the path and on to the village. To these two life had come quickly and gone, leaving not bitterness, but pity; not disillusion, but only pain. There was already enough moonlight when they shook hands for each to see the gathered kindness in the other's eyes.

MR. ICKY

THE QUINTESSENCE OF QUAINTNESS IN ONE ACT

The Scene is the Exterior of a Cottage in West Issacshire on a desperately Arcadian afternoon in August. MR. ICKY, quaintly dressed in the costume of an Elizabethan peasant, is pottering and doddering among the pots and dods. He is an old man, well past the prime of life, no longer young, From the fact that there is a burr in his speech and that he has absent-mindedly put on his coat wrongside out, we surmise that he is either above or below the ordinary superficialities of life.

Near him on the grass lies PETER, a little boy. PETER, of course, has his chin on his palm like the pictures of the young Sir Walter Raleigh. He has a complete set of features, including serious, sombre, even funereal, gray eyes--and radiates that alluring air of never having eaten food. This air can best be radiated during the afterglow of a beef dinner. Be is looking at MR. ICKY, fascinated.

Silence. . . . The song of birds.

PETER: Often at night I sit at my window and regard the stars. Sometimes I think they're my stars.... (Gravely) I think I shall be a star some day....

ME. ICKY: (Whimsically) Yes, yes ... yes....

PETER: I know them all: Venus, Mars, Neptune, Gloria Swanson.

MR. ICKY: I don't take no stock in astronomy.... I've been thinking o' Lunnon, laddie. And calling to mind my daughter, who has gone for to be a typewriter.... (He sighs.)

PETER: I liked Ulsa, Mr. Icky; she was so plump, so round, so buxom.

MR. ICKY: Not worth the paper she was padded with, laddie. (He stumbles over a pile of pots and dods.)

PETER: How is your asthma, Mr. Icky?

MR. ICKY: Worse, thank God!...(Gloomily.) I'm a hundred years old... I'm getting brittle.

PETER: I suppose life has been pretty tame since you gave up petty arson.

MR. ICKY: Yes... yes.... You see, Peter, laddie, when I was fifty I reformed once--in prison.

PETER: You went wrong again?

MR. ICKY: Worse than that. The week before my term expired they insisted on transferring to me the glands of a healthy young prisoner they were executing.

PETER: And it renovated you?

MR. ICKY: Renovated me! It put the Old Nick back into me! This young criminal was evidently a suburban burglar and a kleptomaniac. What was a little playful arson in comparison!

PETER: (Awed) How ghastly! Science is the bunk.

MR. ICKY: (Sighing) I got him pretty well subdued now. 'Tisn't every one who has to tire out two sets o' glands in his lifetime. I wouldn't take another set for all the animal spirits in an orphan asylum.

PETER: (Considering) I shouldn't think you'd object to a nice quiet old clergyman's set.

MR. ICKY: Clergymen haven't got glands--they have souls.

(There is a low, sonorous honking off stage to indicate that a large motor-car has stopped in the immediate vicinity. Then a young man handsomely attired in a dress-suit and a patent-leather silk hat comes onto the stage. He is very mundane. His contrast to the spirituality of the other two is observable as far back as the first row of the balcony. This is RODNEY DIVINE.)

DIVINE: I am looking for Ulsa Icky.

(MR. ICKY rises and stands tremulously between two dods.)

MR. ICKY: My daughter is in Lunnon.

DIVINE: She has left London. She is coming here. I have followed her.

(He reaches into the little mother-of-pearl satchel that hangs at his side for cigarettes. He selects one and scratching a match touches it to the cigarette. The cigarette instantly lights.)

DIVINE: I shall wait.

(He waits. Several hours pass. There is no sound except an occasional cackle or hiss from the dods as they quarrel among themselves. Several songs can be introduced here or some card tricks by DIVINE or a tumbling act, as desired.)

DIVINE: It's very quiet here.

MR. ICKY: Yes, very quiet....

(Suddenly a loudly dressed girl appears; she is very worldly. It is ULSA ICKY. On her is one of those shapeless faces peculiar to early Italian painting.)

ULSA: (In a coarse, worldly voice) Feyther! Here I am! Ulsa did what?