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Based on her near-death experience with influenza, how does Miranda feel about life after she has survived her illness? Why would she feel this way?

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2

>Pale Horse, Pale Rider

By Katherine Anne Porter

In sleep she knew she was in her bed, but not the bed

she had lain down in a few hours since, and the room

was not the same but it was a room she had known

somewhere. Her heart was a stone lying upon her breast

outside of her; her pulses lagged and paused, and she

knew that something strange was going to happen, even

as the early morning winds were cool through the lat-

tice, the streaks of light were dark blue and the whole

house was snoring in its sleep.

Now I must get up and go while they are all quiet.

Where are my things? Things have a will of their own

in this place and hide where they like. Daylight will

strike a sudden blow on the roof startling them all up

to their feet; faces will beam asking. Where are you

going. What are you doing. What are you thinking.

How do you feel. Why do you say such things. What

do you mean? No more sleep. Where are my boots and

what horse shall I ride? Fiddler or Graylie or Miss Lucy

with the long nose and the wicked eye? How I have

loved this house in the morning before we are all awake

and tangled together like badly cast fishing lines. Too

many people have been born here, and have wept too

much here, and have laughed too much, and have been

too angry and outrageous with each other here. Too

many have died in this bed already, there are far too

many ancestral bones propped up on the mantelpieces,

there have been too damned many antimacassars in this

house, she said loudly, and oh, what accumulation of

storied dust never allowed to settle in peace for one

moment.

And the stranger? Where is that lank greenish stran-

ger I remember hanging about the place, welcomed by

my grandfather, my great-aunt, my five times removed

cousin, my decrepit hound and my silver kitten? Why

did they take to him, I wonder? And where are they

now? Yet I saw him pass the window in the evening.

What else besides them did I have in the world? Noth-

ing. Nothing is mine, I have only nothing but it is

enough, it is beautiful and it is all mine. Do I even walk

about in my own skin or is it something I have borrowed

to spare my modesty? Now what horse shall I borrow

for this journey I do not mean to take, Graylie or Miss

Lucy or Fiddler who can jump ditches in the dark and

knows how to get the bit between his teeth? Early

morning is best for me because trees are trees in one

stroke, stones are stones set in shades known to be grass,

there are no false shapes or surmises, the road is still

asleep with the crust of dew unbroken. I’ll take Graylie

because he is not afraid of bridges.

Come now, Graylie, she said, taking his bridle, we

must outrun Death and the Devil. You are no good for

it, she told the other horses standing saddled before the

stable gate, among them the horse of the stranger, gray

also, with tarnished nose and ears. The stranger swung

into his saddle beside her, leaned far towards her and

regarded her without meaning, the blank still stare of

mindless malice that makes no threats and can bide its

time. She drew Graylie around sharply, urged him to

run. He leaped the low rose hedge and the narrow ditch

beyond, and the dust of the lane flew heavily under his

beating hoofs. The stranger rode beside her, easily,

lightly, his reins loose in his half-closed hand, straight

and elegant in dark shabby garments that flapped upon

his bones; his pale face smiled in an evil trance, he did

not glance at her. Ah, I have seen this fellow before, I

know this man if I could place him. He is no stranger

to me.

She pulled Graylie up, rose in her stirrups and

shouted, I’m not going with you this time— ride on!

Without pausing or turning his head the stranger rode

on. Gray lie’s ribs heaved under her, her own ribs rose

and fell. Oh, why am I so tired, I must wake up. “But

let me get a fine yawn first,” she said, opening her eyes

and stretching, “a slap of cold water in my face, for

I’ve been talking in my sleep again, I heard myself but

what was I saying?”

Slowly, unwillingly, Miranda drew herself up inch

by inch out of the pit of sleep, waited in a daze for life

to begin

again.

A single word struck in her mind, a gong

of warning, reminding her for the day long what she

forgot happily in sleep, and only in sleep. The war, said

the gong, and she shook her head. Dangling her feet

idly with their slippers hanging, she was reminded of

the way all sorts of persons sat upon her desk at the

newspaper office. Every day she found someone there,

sitting upon her desk instead of the chair provided, dan-

gling his legs, eyes roving, full of his important affairs,

waiting to pounce about something or other. ^‘‘Why

won’t they sit in the chair? Should I put a sign on it,

saying, ‘For God’s sake, sit here’?”

Far from putting up a sign, she did not even frown at

her visitors. Usually she did not notice them at all until

their determination to be seen was greater than her de-

termination not to see them. Saturday, she thought, lying

comfortably in her tub of hot water, will be pay day,

as always. Or I hope always. Her thoughts roved hazily

in a continual effort to bring together and unite firmly

the disturbing oppositions in her day-to-day existence,

where survival, she could see clearly, had become a series

of feats of sleight of hand. I owe— let me see, I wish I

had pencil and paper— well, suppose I did pay five dol-

lars now on a Liberty Bond, I couldn’t possibly keep it

up. Or maybe. Eighteen dollars a week. So much for

rent, so much for food, and I mean to have a few things

besides. About five dollars’ worth. Will leave me

twenty-seven cents. I suppose I can make it. I suppose

I should be worried. I am worried. Very well, now I

am worried and what next? Twenty-seven cents. That’s

not so bad. Pure profit, really. Imagine if they should

suddenly raise me to twenty I should then have two

dollars and twenty-seven cents left over. But they aren’t

going to raise me to twenty. They are in fact going to

throw me out if I don’t buy a Liberty Bond. I hardly

believe that. I’ll ask Bill. (Bill was the city editor.) 1

wonder if a threat like that isn’t a kind of blackmail. I

don’t believe even a Lusk Committeeman can get away

with that.

Yesterday there had been two pairs of legs dangling,

on either side of her typewriter, both pairs stuffed

thickly info funnels of dark expensive-looking material.

She noticed at a distance that one of them was oldish

and one was youngish, and they both of them had a

stale air of borrowed importance which apparently they

had got from the same source. They were both much

too well nourished and the younger one wore a square

little mustache. Being what they were, no matter what

their business was it would be something unpleasant.

Miranda had nodded at them, pulled out her chair and

without removing her cap or gloves had reached into a

pile of letters and sheets from the copy desk as if she

had not a moment to spare. They did not move, or take

off their hats. At last she had said “Good morning” to

them, and asked if they were, perhaps, waiting for her?

The two men slid off the desk, leaving some of her

papers rumpled, and the oldish man had inquired why

she had not bought a Liberty Bond. Miranda had looked

at him then, and got a poor impression. He was a pursy-

faced man, gross-mouthed, with little lightless eyes, and

Miranda wondered why nearly all of those selected to

do the war work at home were of his sort. He might be

anything at all, she thought; advance agent for a road

show, promoter of a wildcat oil company, a former

saloon keeper announcing the opening of a new cabaret,

an automobile salesman— any follower of any one of the

crafty, haphazard callings. But he was now all Patriot,

working for the government. “Look here,” he asked her,

“do you know there’s a war, or don’t you?”

Did he expect an answer to that? Be quiet, Miranda

told herself, this was bound to happen. Sooner or later

it happens. Keep your head. The man wagged his finger

at her, “Do you?” he persisted, as if he were prompting

an obstinate child.

“Oh, the war,” Miranda had echoed on a rising note

and she almost smiled

at him.

It was habitual, automatic,

to give that solemn, mystically uplifted grin when you

spoke the words or heard them spoken. “Cest la lerre,”

whether you could pronounce it or not, was even better,

and always, always, you shrugged.

“Yeah,” said the younger man in a nasty way, “the

war.”

Miranda, startled by the tone, met his eye; his

stare was really stony, really viciously cold, the kind of

thing you might expect to meet behind a pistol on a

deserted corner. This expression gave temporary mean-

ing to a set of features otherwise nondescript, the face

of those men who have no business of their own. “We’re

having a war, and some people are buying Liberty Bonds

and others just don’t seem to get around to it,” he said.

“That’s what we mean.”

Miranda frowned with nervousness, the sharp begin-

nings of fear. “Are you selling them?” she asked, tak-

ing the cover off her typewriter and putting it back

again.

“No, we’re not selling them,” said the older man.

“We’re just asking you why you haven’t bought one.”

The voice was persuasive and ominous.

Miranda began to explain that she had no money, and

did not know where to find any, when the older man

interrupted: “That’s no excuse, no excuse at all, and

you know it, with the Huns overrunning martyred Bel-

gium.”

“With our American boys fighting and dying in Bel-

leau Wood,” said the younger man, “anybody can raise

fifty dollars to help beat the Boche.”

Miranda said hastily, “I have eighteen dollars a week

and not another cent in the world. I simply cannot buy

anything.”

“You can pay for it five dollars a week,” said the older

man (they had stood there cawing back and forth over

her head), “like a lot of other people in this office, and

a lot of other offices besides are doing.”

Miranda, desperately silent, had thought, “Suppose I

were not a coward, but said what I really thought? Sup-

pose I said to hell with this filthy war? Suppose I asked

that little thug. What’s the matter with you, why aren’t

you rotting in Belleau Wood? I wish you were . .

She began to arrange her letters and notes, her fingers

refusing to pick up things properly. The older man

went on making his little set speech. It was hard, of

course. Everybody was suffering, naturally. Everybody

had to do his share. But as to that, a Liberty Bond was

the safest investment you could make. It was just like

having the money in the bank. Of course. The govern-

ment was back of it and where better could you invest?

“I agree with you about that,” said Miranda, “but I

haven’t any money to invest.”

And of course, the man had gone on, it wasn’t so

much her fifty dollars that was going to make any dif-

ference. It was just a pledge of good faith on her part.

A pledge of good faith that she was a loyal American

doing her duty. And the thing was safe as a church.

Why, if he had a million dollars he’d be glad to put

every last cent of it in these Bonds. . . . “You can’t

lose by it,” he said, almost benevolently, “and you can

lose a lot if you don’t. Think it over. You’re the only

one in this whole newspaper office that hasn’t come in.

And every firm in this city has come in one hundred per

cent. Over at the Daily Clarion nobody had to be asked

twice.”

“They pay better over there,” said

Miranda.

“But

next week, if I can. Not now, next week.”

“See that you do,” said the younger man. “This ain’t

any laughing matter.”

They lolled away, past the Society Editor’s desk, past

Bill the City Editor’s desk, past the long copy desk

where old man Gibbons sat all night shouting at inter-

vals, “Jarge! Jarge!” and the copy boy would come fly-

ing. “Never say people when you mean persons,” old

man Gibbons had instructed Miranda, “and never say

practically, say virtually, and don’t for God’s sake ever

so long as I am at this desk use the barbarism in as much

under any circumstances whatsoever. Now you’re edu-

cated, you may go.” At the head of the stairs her in-

quisitors had stopped in their fussy pride and vainglory,

lighting cigars and wedging their hats more firmly over

their eyes.

Miranda turned over in the soothing water, and

wished she might fall asleep there, to wake up only when

it was time to sleep again. She had a burning slow head-

ache, and noticed it now, remembering she had waked

up with it and it had in fact begun the evening before.

While she dressed she tried to trace the insidious career

of her headache, and it seemed reasonable to suppose it

had started with the war. “It’s been a headache, all right,

but not quite like this.” After the Committeemen had

left, yesterday, she had gone to the cloakroom and had

found Mary Townsend, the Society Editor, quietly hys-

terical about something. She was perched on the edge

of the shabby wicker couch with ridges down the cen-

ter, knitting on something rose-colored. Now and then

she would put down her knitting, seize her head with

inquiring voice. Her column was called Ye Towne

Gossyp, so of course everybody called her Towney.

Miranda and Towney had a great deal in common, and

liked each other. They had both been real reporters

once, and had been sent together to “cover” a scan-

dalous elopement, in which no marriage had taken place,

after all, and the recaptured girl, her face swollen, had

sat with her mother, who was moaning steadily under a

mound of blankets. They had both wept painfully and

implored the young reporters to suppress the worst of

the story. They had suppressed it, and the rival news-

paper printed it all the next day. Miranda and Towney

had then taken their punishment together, and had been

degraded publicly to routine female jobs, one to the

theaters, the other to society. They had this in common,

that neither of them could see what else they could pos-

sibly have done, and they knew they were considered

fools by the rest of the staff— nice girls, but fools. At

sight of Miranda, Towney had broken out in a rage,

“1 can’t do it. I’ll never be able to raise the money, I

told them, I can’t, I can’t, but they wouldn’t listen.”

Miranda said, “I knew I wasn’t the only person in this

office who couldn’t raise five dollars. I told them I

couldn’t, too, and I can’t.”

“Ay God,” said Towney, in the same voice, “they

told me I’d lose my job—”

“I’m going to ask Bill,” Miranda said; “I don’t believe

Bill would do that.”

“It’s not up to Bill,” said Towney. “He’d have to if

they got after him. Do you suppose they could put us in

jail.?”

“I don’t know,” said Miranda. “If they do, we won’t

be loneso

me.”

She sat down beside Towney and held her

own head. “What kind of soldier are you knitting that

for? It’s a sprightly color, it ought to cheer him up.”

“’ like hell,” said Towney, her needles going again.

“I’m naking this for myself. That’s that.”

“Well,” said Miranda, “we won’t be lonesome and

we’ll catch up on our sleep.” She washed her face and

put on fresh make-up. Taking clean gray gloves out of

her pocket she went out to Join a group of young

women fresh from the country club dances, the morn-

ing bridge, the charity bazaar, the Red Cross work-

rooms, who were wallowing in good works. They gave

tea dances and raised money, and with the money they

bought quantities of sweets, fruit, cigarettes, and maga-

zines for the men in the cantonment hospitals. With this

loot they were now setting out, a gay procession of

high-powered cars and brightly tinted faces to cheer

the brave boys who already, you might very well say,

had fallen in defense of their country. It must be fright-

fully hard on them, the dears, to be floored like this

when they’re all crazy to get overseas and into the

trenches as quickly as possible. Yes, and some of them

are the cutest things you ever saw, I didn’t know there

were so many good-looking men in this country, good

heavens, I said, where do they come from? Well, my

dear, you may ask yourself that question, who knows

where they did come from? You’re quite right, the way

I feel about it is this, we must do everything we can to

make them contented, but I draw the line at talking to

them. I told the chaperons at those dances for enlisted

men. I’ll dance with them, every dumbbell who asks me,

but I will NOT talk to them, I said, even if there is a war.

So I danced hundreds of miles without opening my

mouth except to say. Please keep your knees to yourself.

I’m glad we gave those dances up. Yes, and the men

stopped coming, anyway. But listen. I’ve heard that a

great many of the enlisted men come from very good

families; I’m not good at catching names, and those I did

catch I’d never heard before, so I don’t know . . . but it

seems to me if they were from good families, you’d know

it, wouldn’t you? I mean, if a man is well bred he doesn’t

step on your feet, does he? At least not that. I used to

have a pair of sandals ruined at every one of those

dances. Well, I think any kind of social life is in very

poor taste just now, I think we should all put on our

Red Cross head dresses and wear them for the duration

of the war—

Miranda, carrying her basket and her flowers, moved

in among the young women, who scattered out and

rushed upon the ward uttering girlish laughter meant to

be refreshingly gay, but there was a grim determined

clang in it calculated to freeze the blood. Miserably em-

barrassed at the idiocy of her errand, she walked rapidly

between the long rows of high beds, set foot to foot

with a narrow aisle between. The men, a selected pre-

sentable lot, sheets drawn up to their chins, not seriously

ill, were bored and restless, most of them willing to be

amused at anything. They were for the most part pic-

turesquely bandaged as to arm or head, and those who

were not visibly wounded invariably replied “Rheuma-

tism” if some tactless girl, who had been solemnly

warned never to ask this question, still forgot and asked

a man what his illness was. The good-natured, eager

ones, laughing and calling out from their hard narrow

beds, were soon surrounded. Miranda, with her wilting

bouquet and her basket of sweets and cigarettes, looking

about, caught the unfriendly bitter eye of a young fel-

low lying on his back, his right leg in a cast and pulley.

She stopped at the foot of his bed and continued to look

at him, and he looked back with an unchanged, hostile

face. Not having any, thank you and be damned to the

whole business, his eyes said plainly to her, and will you

be so good as to take your trash off my bed? For

Miranda had set it down, leaning over to place it where

he might be able to reach it if he would. Having set it

down, she was incapable of taking it up again, but hur-

ried away, her face burning, down the long aisle and

out into the cool October sunshine, where the dreary

raw barracks swarmed and worked with an aimless life

of scurrying, dun-colored insects; and going around to a

window near where he lay, she looked in, spying upon

her soldier. He was lying with his eyes closed, his eye-

brows in a sad bitter frown. She could not place him

at all, she could not imagine where he came from nor

what sort of being he might have been “in life,” she said

to herself. His face was young and the features sharp

and plain, the hands were not laborer’s hands but not

well-cared-for hands either. They were good useful

properly shaped hands, lying there on the coverlet. It

occurred to her that it would be her luck to find him,

instead of a jolly hungry puppy glad of a bite to eat and

a little chatter. It is like turning a corner absorbed in

your painful thoughts and meeting your state of mind

embodied, face to face, she said. “My own feelings about

this whole thing, made flesh. Never again will I come

here, this is no sort of thing to be doing. This is disgust-

ing,” she told herself plainly. “Of course I would pick

him out,” she thought, getting into the back seat of the

car she came in, “serves me right, I know better.”

Another girl came out looking very tired and climbed

in beside her. After a short silence, the girl said in a puz-

zled way, “I don’t know what good it does, really. Some

of them wouldn’t take anything at all. I don’t like this,

do you?”

“I hate it,” said .Miranda.

“I suppose it’s all right, though,” said the girl, cau-

tiously.

“Perhaps,” said .Miranda, turning cautious also.

That was for yesterday. At this point Miranda de-

cided there was no good in thinking of yesterday, except

for the hour after midnight she had spent dancing with

Adam. He was in her mind so much, she hardly knew

when she was thinking about him directly. His image

was simply always present in more or less degree, he was

sometimes nearer the surface of her thoughts, the pleas-

antest, the only really pleasant thought she had. She ex-

amined her face in the mirror between the windows and

decided that her uneasiness was not all imagination. For

three days at least she had felt odd and her expression

was unfamiliar. She would have to raise that fifty dollars

somehow, she supposed, or who knows what can hap-

pen? She was hardened to stories of personal disaster, of

outrageous accusations and extraordinarily bitter penal-

ties that had grown monstrously out of incidents very

little more important than her failure— her refusal— to buy

a bond. No, she did not find herself a pleasing sight,

flushed and shiny, and even her hair felt as if it had de-

cided to grow in the other direction. I must do some-

thing about this, I can’t let Adam see me like this, she

told herself, knowing that even now at that moment he

was listening for the turn of her doorknob, and he

would be in the hallway, or on the porch when she came

out, as if by sheerest coincidence. The noon sunlight

cast cold slanting shadows in the room where, she said, I

suppose I live, and this day is beginning badly, but they

all do now, for one reason or another. In a drowse, she

sprayed perfume on her hair, put on her moleskin cap

and jacket, now in their second winter, but still good,

still nice to wear, again being glad she had paid a fright-

ening price for them. She had enjoyed them all this time,

and in no case would she have had the money now.

Maybe she could manage for that Bond. She could not

find the lock without leaning to search for it, then stood

undecided a moment possessed by the notion that she

had forgotten something she would miss seriously

later on.

Adam was in the hallway, a step outside his own door;

he swung about as if quite startled to see her, and said.

“Hello. I don’t have to go back to camp today after all—

isn’t that luck?”

Miranda smiled at him gaily because she was always

delighted at the sight of him. He was wearing his new

uniform, and he was all olive and tan and tawny, hay

colored and sand colored from hair to boots. She half

noticed again that he always began by smiling at her;

that his smile faded gradually; that his eyes became fixed

and thoughtful as if he were reading in a poor light.

They walked out together into the fine fall day, scuf-

fling bright ragged leaves under their feet, turning their

faces up to a generous sky really blue and spotless. At

the first comer they waited for a funeral to pass, the

mourners seated straight and firm as if proud in their

sorrow.

“I imagine I’m late,” said Miranda, “as usual. What

time is

it?”

“Nearly half past one,” he said, slipping back his

sleeve with an exaggerated thrust of his ami upward.

The young soldiers were still self-conscious about their

wrist watches. Such of them as Miranda knew were boys

from southern and southwestern towns, far off the At-

lantic seaboard, and they had always believed that only

sissies wore wrist watches. “I’ll slap you on the wrist

watch,” one vaudeville comedian would simper to an-

other, and it was always a good joke, never stale.

“I think it’s a most sensible way to carry a watch, ’

said Miranda. “You needn’t blush,”

“I’m nearly used to it,” said Adam, who was from

Texas, “We’ve been told time and again how all the he-

manly regular army men wear them. It’s the horrors of

war,” he said; “are we downhearted? I’ll say we are.”

It was the kind of patter going the rounds. “You look

it,” said Miranda.

He was tall and heavily muscled in the shoulders, nar-

row in the waist and flanks, and he was infinitely but-

toned, strapped, harnessed into a uniform as tough and

unyielding in cut as a strait jacket, though the cloth was

fine and supple. He had his uniforms made by the best

tailor he could find, he confided to Miranda one day

when she told him how squish he was looking in his new

soldier suit. “Hard enough to make anything of the out-

fit, anyhow,” he told her. “It’s the least I can do for my

beloved country, not to go around looking like a tramp.”

He was twenty-four years old and a Second Lieutenant

in an Engineers Corps, on leave because his outfit ex-

pected to be sent over shortly. “Came in to make my

will,” he told Miranda, “and get a supply of toothbrushes

and razor blades. By what gorgeous luck do you sup-

pose,” he asked her, “I happened to pick on your room-

ing house? How did I know you were there? ”

Strolling, keeping step, his stout polished well-made

boots setting themselves down firmly beside her thin-

soled black suede, they put off as long as they could the

end of their moment together, and kept up as well as

they could their small talk that flew back and forth over

little grooves worn in the thin upper surface of the

brain, things you could say and hear clink reassuringly

at once without disturbing the radiance which played

and darted about the simple and lovely miracle of being

two persons named Adam and Miranda, twenty-four

years old each, alive and on the earth at the same mo-

ment: “Are you in the mood for dancing, Miranda?”

and “I’m always in the mood for dancing, Adam!” but

there were things in the way, the day that ended with

dancing was a long way to go.

He really did look, Miranda thought, like a fine

healthy apple this morning. One time or another in their

talking, he had boasted that he had never had a pain in

his life that he could remember. Instead of being hor-

rified at this monster, she approved his monstrous unique-

ness. As for herself, she had had too many pains to men-

tion, so she did not mention them. After working for

three years on a morning newspaper she had an illusion

of maturity and experience; but it was fatigue merely,

she decided, from keeping what she had been brought

up to believe were unnatural hours, eating casually at

dirty little restaurants, drinking bad coffee all night, and

smoking too much. When she said something of her way

of living to Adam, he studied her face a few seconds as

if he had never seen it before, and said in a forthright

way, “Why, it hasn’t hurt you a bit, I think you’re

beautiful,” and left her dangling there, wondering if he

had thought she wished to be praised. She did wish to

be praised, but not at that moment. Adam kept unwhole-

some hours too, or had in the ten days they had known

each other, staying awake until one o’clock to take her

out for supper; he smoked also continually, though if

she did not stop him he was apt to explain to her exactly

what smoking did to the lungs. “But,” he said, “does it

matter so much if you’re going to war, anyway?”

“No,” said Miranda, “and it matters even less if you’re

staying at home knitting socks. Give me a cigarette, will

you?” They paused at another corner, under a half-

foliaged maple, and hardly glanced at a funeral proces-

sion approaching. His eyes were pale tan with orange

flecks in them, and his hair was the color of a haystack

when you turn the weathered top back to the clear

straw beneath. He fished out his cigarette case and

snapped his silver lighter at her, snapped it several times

in his own face, and they moved on, smoking.

“I can see you knitting socks,” he said. “That would

be just your speed. You know perfectly well you can’t

knit.”

“I do worse,” she said, soberly; “I write pieces advis-

ing other young women to knit and roll bandages and do

without sugar and help win the war.”

“Oh, well,” said Adam, with the easy masculine

morals in such questions, “that’s merely your job, that

doesn’t count.”

“I wonder,” said Miranda. “How did you manage to

get an extension of leave?”

“They just gave it,” said Adam, “for no reason. The

men are dying like flies out there, anyway. This funny

new disease. Simply knocks you into a cocked hat.”

“It seems to be a plague,” said Miranda, “something

out of the Middle Ages. Did you ever see so many fu-

nerals, ever?”

“Never did. Well, let’s be strong minded and not have

any of it. I’ve got four days more straight from the blue

and not a blade of grass must grow under our feet. What

about tonight? ”

“Same thing,” she told him, “but make it about half

past one. I’ve got a special job beside my usual run of the

mill.”

“What a job you’ve got,” said Adam, “nothing to do

but run from one dizzy amusement to another and then

write a piece

about it.”

“Yes, it’s too dizzy for words,” said Miranda. They

stood while a funeral passed, and this time they watched

it in silence. Miranda pulled her cap to an angle and

winked in the sunlight, her head swimming slowly “like

goldfish,” she told Adam, “my head swims. I’m only half

awake, I must have some coffee.”

They lounged on their elbows over the counter of a

drug store. “No more cream for the stay-at-homes,” she

said, “and only one lump of sugar. I’ll have two or none;

that’s the kind of martyr I’m being. I mean to live on

boiled cabbage and wear shoddy from now on and get

in good shape for the next round. No war is going to

sneak up on me again.”

“Oh, there won’t be any more wars, don’t you read

the newspapers?” asked Adam. “We’re going to mop

’em up this time, and they’re going to stay mopped, and

this is going to be all.”

“So they told me,” said Miranda, tasting her bitter

lukewarm brew and making a rueful face. Their smiles

approved of each other, they felt they had got the right

tone, they were taking the war properly. Above all,

thought Miranda, no tooth-gnashing, no hair-tearing, it’s

noisy and unbecoming and it doesn’t get you anywhere.

“Swill,” said Adam rudely, pushing back his cup. “Is

that all you’re having for breakfast?”

“It’s more than I want,” said Miranda.

“I had buckwheat cakes, with sausage and maple

syrup, and two bananas, and two cups of coffee, at eight

o’clock, and right now, again, I feel like a famished or-

phan left in the ashcan. I’m all set,” said Adam, “for

broiled steak and fried potatoes and—”

“Don’t go on with it,” said Miranda, “it sounds deliri-

ous to me. Do all that after I’m gone.” She slipped from

the high seat, leaned against it slightly, glanced at her

face in her round mirror, rubbed rouge on her lips and

decided that she was past praying for.

“There’s something terribly wrong,” she told Adam.

“I feel too rotten. It can’t just be the weather, and the

war.”

“The weather is perfect,” said Adam, “and the war is

simply too good to be true. But since when? You were

all right yesterday.”

“I don’t know,” she said slowly, her voice sounding

small and thin. They stopped as always at the open door

before the flight of littered steps leading up to the news-

paper loft. Miranda listened for a moment to tlie rattle of

typewriters above, the steady rumble of presses below.

“I wish we were going to spend the whole afternoon on

a park bench,” she said, “or drive to the mountains.”

“I do too,” he said; “let’s do that tomorrow.”

“Yes, tomorrow, unless something else happens. I’d

like to run away,” she told him; “let’s both.”

“Me?” said Adam. “Where I’m going there’s no run-

ning to speak of. You mostly crawl about on your stom-

ach here and there among the debris. You know, barbed

wire and such stuff. It’s going to be the kind of thing

that happens once in a lifetime.” He reflected a moment,

and went on, “I don’t know a darned thing about it,

really, but they make it sound awfully messy. I’ve heard

so much about it I feel as if I had been there and back.

It’s going to be an anticlimax,” he said, “like seeing the

pictures of a place so often you can’t sec it at all when

you actually get there. Seems to me I’ve been in the

army all my life.”

Six months, he meant. Eternity. He looked so clear

and fresh, and he had never had a pain in his life. She

had seen them when they had been there and back and

they never looked like this again. “Already the returned

hero,” she said, “and don’t I wish you were.”

“When I learned the use of the bayonet in my first

training camp,” said i.\dam, “I gouged the vitals out of

more sandbags and sacks of hay than I could keep track

of. They kept bawling at us, ‘Get him, get that Boche,

stick him before he sticks you’— and we’d go for those

sandbags like wildfire, and honestly, sometimes I felt a

perfect fool for getting so worked up when I saw the

sand trickling out. I used to wake up in the night some-

times feeling silly about it.”

“I can imagine,” said Miranda. “It’s perfect nonsense.”

They lingered, unwilling to say good-by. After a little

pause, Adam, as if keeping up the conversation, asked,

“Do you know what the average life expectation of a

sapping party is after it hits the Job?”

“Something speedy, I suppose.”

“Just nine minutes,” said Adam; “I read that in your

own newspaper not a week ago.”

“Make it ten and I’ll come along,” said Miranda.

“Not another second,” said Adam, “exactly nine min-

utes, take it or leave it.”

“Stop bragging,” said Miranda. “Who figured that

out?”

“A noncombatant,” said Adam, “a fellow with

rickets.”

This seemed very comic, they laughed and leaned to-

wards each other and Afiranda heard herself being a little

shrill. She wiped the tears from her eyes. “My, it’s a

funny war,” she said; “isn’t it? I laugh every time I think

about it.”

Adam took her hand in both of his and pulled a little

at the tips of her gloves and sniffed them. “What nice

perfume you have,” he said, “and such a lot of it, too.

I like a lot of perfume on gloves and hair,” he said, snif-

fing again.

“I’ve got probably too much,” she said. “I can’t smell

or see or hear today. I must have a fearful cold.”

“Don’t catch cold,” said Adam; “my leave is nearly

up and it will be the last, the very last.” She moved her

fingers in her gloves as he pulled at the fingers and

turned her hands as if they were something new and cu-

rious and of great value, and she turned shy and quiet.

She liked him, she liked him, and there was more than

this but it was no good even imagining, because he was

not for her nor for any woman, being beyond experi-

ence already, committed without any knowledge or act

of his own to death. She took back her hands. “Good-

by,” she said finally, “until tonight.”

She ran upstairs and looked back from the top. He

was still watching her, and raised his hand without smil-

ing. Miranda hardly ever saw anyone look back after he

had said good-by. She could not help turning sometimes

for one glimpse more of the person she had been talking

with, as if that would save too rude and too sudden a

snapping of even the lightest bond. But people hurried

away, their faces already changed, fixed, in their strain-

ing towards their next stopping place, already absorbed

in planning their next act or encounter. Adam was wait-

ing as if he expected her to turn, and under his brows

fixed in a strained frown, his eyes were very black.

At her desk she sat without taking off jacket or cap, slit-

ting envelopes and pretending to read the letters. Only

Chuck Rouncivale, the sports reporter, and Ye Towne

Gossyp were sitting on her desk today, and them she

liked having there. She sat on theirs when she pleased.

Towney and Chuck were talking and they went on

with it.

“They say,” said Towney, “that it is really caused by

genus brought by a German ship to Boston, a camou-

flaged ship, naturally, it didn’t come in under its own

colors. Isn’t that ridiculous?”

“Maybe it was a submarine,” said Chuck, “sneaking in

from the bottom of the sea in the dead of night. Now

that sounds better.”

“Yes, it does,” said Towney; “they always slip up

somewhere in these details . . . and they think the

germs were sprayed over the city— it started in Boston,

you know— and somebody reported seeing a strange,

thick, grea.sy-looking cloud float up out of Boston Har-

bor and spread slowly all over that end of town. I think

it was an old woman who saw it.”

“Should have been,” said Chuck.

“I read it in a New York newspaper,” said Towney;

“so it’s bound to be true.”

Chuck and Miranda laughed so loudly at this that Bill

stood up and glared at them. “Towney still reads the

newspapers,” explained Chuck.

“Well, what’s funny about that?” asked Bill, sitting

down again and frowning into the clutter before him.

“It was a noncombatant saw that cloud,” said Miranda,

“Naturally,” said Towney,

“Member of the Lusk Committee, maybe,” said

Miranda.

“The Angel of Mons,” said Chuck, “or a dollar-a-year

man.”

Miranda wished to stop hearing, and talking, she

wished to think for just five minutes of her own about

Adam, really to think about him, but there was no time.

She had seen him first ten days ago, and since then they

had been crossing streets together, darting between

trucks and limousines and pushcarts and farm wagons;

he had waited for her in doorways and in little restau-

rants that smelled of stale frying fat; they had eaten and

danced to the urgent whine and bray of jazz orchestras,

they had sat in dull theaters because Miranda was there

to write a piece about the play. Once they had gone to

the mountains and, leaving the car, had climbed a stony

trail, and had come out on a ledge upon a flat stone,

where they sat and watched the lights change on a val-

ley landscape that was, no doubt, Miranda said, quite

apocryphal— “We need not believe it, but it is fine

poetry,” she told him; they had leaned their shoulders

together there, and had sat quite still, watching. On two

Sundays they had gone to the geological museum, and

had pored in shared fascination over bits of meteors,

rock formations, fossilized tusks and trees, Indian ar-

rows, grottoes from the silver and gold lodes. “Think

of those old miners washing out their fortunes in little

pans beside the streams,” said Adam, “and inside the

earth there was this—” and he had told her he liked bet-

ter those things that took long to make; he loved air-

planes too, all sorts of machinery, things carved out of

wood or stone. He knew nothing much about them, but

he recognized them when he saw them. He had con-

fessed that he simply could not get through a book, any

kind of book except textbooks on engineering; reading

bored him to crumbs; he regretted now he hadn’t

brought his roadster, but he hadn’t thought he would

need a car; he loved driving, he wouldn’t expect her to

believe how many hundreds of miles he could get over

in a day … he had showed her snapshots of himself

at the wheel of his roadster; of himself sailing a boat,

looking very free and windblown, all angles, hauling on

the ropes; he would have joined the air force, but his

mother had hysterics every time he mentioned it. She

didn’t seem to realize that dog fighting in the air was a

good deal safer than sapping parties on the ground at

night. But he hadn’t argued, because of course she did

not realize about sapping parties. And here he was,

stuck, on a plateau a mile high with no water for a boat

and his car at home, otherwise they could really have

had a good time. Miranda knew he was trying to tell her

what kind of person he was when he had his machinery

with him. She felt she knew pretty well what kind of

person he was, and would have liked to tell him that if

he thought he had left himself at home in a boat or an

automobile, he was much mistaken. The telephones were

ringing. Bill was shouting at somebody who kept saying,

“Well, but listen, well, but listen—” but nobody was go-

ing to listen, of course, nobody. Old man Gibbons bel-

lowed in despair, “Jarge, Jarge— ”

“Just the same,” Towney was saying in her most com-

placent patriotic voice, “Hut Service is a fine idea, and

we should all volunteer even if they don’t want us.”

Towney docs well at this, thought Miranda, look at her;

remembering the rose-colored sweater and the tight re-

bellious face in the cloakroom. Towney was now all

open-faced glory and goodness, willing to sacrifice her-

self for her country. “After all,” said Towney, “I can

sing and dance well enough for the Little Theater, and I

could write their letters for them, and at a pinch I might

drive an ambulance. I have driven a Ford for years.”

Miranda joined in: “Well, I can sing and dance too,

but who’s going to do the bed-making and the scrub-

bing up? Those huts are hard to keep, and it would be a

dirty job and we’d be perfectly miserable; and as I’ve

got a hard dirty job and am perfectly miserable, I’m

going to stay at home.”

“I think the women should keep out of it,” said Chuck

Rouncivale. ‘’They just add skirts to the horrors of

war.” Chuck had bad lungs and fretted a good deal

about missing the show. “I could’ve been there and

back with a leg off by now; it would have served the old

man right. Then he’d either have to buy his own hooch

or sober up.”

Miranda had seen Chuck on pay day giving the old

man money for hooch. He was a good-humored ingrati-

ating old scoundrel, too, that was the worst of him. He

slapped his son on the back and beamed upon him with

the bleared eye of paternal affection while he took his

last nickel.

“It was Florence Nightingale ruined wars,” Chuck

went on. “What’s the idea of petting soldiers and bind-

ing up their wounds and soothing their fevered brows?

That’s not war. Let ’em perish where they fall. That’s

what they’re there for.”

“You can talk,” said Towney, with a slantwise glint

at him.

“What’s the idea? ” asked Chuck, flushing and hunch-

ing his shoulders. “You know I’ve got this lung, or

maybe half of it anyway by

now.”

“You’re much too sensitive,” said Towney. “I didn’t

mean a thing.”

Bill had been raging about, chewing his half-smoked

cigar, his hair standing up in a brush, his eyes soft and

lambent but wild, like a stag’s. He would never, thought

Miranda, be more than fourteen years old if he lived

for a century, which he would not, at the rate he was

going. He behaved exactly like city editors in the mov-

ing pictures, even to the chewed cigar. Had he formed

his style on the films, or had scenario writers seized once

for all on the type Bill in its inarguable purity? Bill was

shouting to Chuck: ‘And if he comes back here take

him up the alley and saw his head off by hand!’

Chuck said, “He’ll be back, don’t worry.” Bill said

mildly, already off on another track, “Well, saw him

off.” Towney went to her own desk, but Chuck sat

waiting amiably to be taken to the new vaudeville show.

Miranda, with two tickets, always invited one of the re-

porters to go with her on Monday. Chuck was lavishly

hardboiled and professional in his sports writing, but he

had told Miranda that he didn’t give a damn about

sports, really; the job kept him out in the open, and paid

him enough to buy the old man’s hooch. He preferred

shows and didn’t see why women always had the job.

“Who docs Bill want sawed today?” asked Miranda.

“That hoofer you panned in this morning’s,” said

Chuck. “He was up here bright and early asking for the

guy that writes up the show business. He said he was

going to take the goof who wrote that piece up the alley

and bop him in the nose. He said . . .”

“I hope he’s gone,” said Miranda; “I do hope he had

to catch a train.”

Chuck stood up and arranged his maroon-colored tur-

tle-necked sweater, glanced down at the pea soup tweed

plus fours and the hobnailed tan boots which he hoped

would help to disguise the fact that he had a bad lung

and didn’t care for sports, and said, “He’s long gone by

now, don’t worry. Let’s get going; you’re late as usual.”

Miranda, facing about, almost stepped on the toes of a

little drab man in a derby hat. He might have been a

pretty fellow once, but now his mouth drooped where

he had lost his side teeth, and his sad red-rimmed eyes

had given up coquetry. A thin brown wave of hair was

combed out with brilliantine and curled against the rim

of the derby. He didn’t move his feet, but stood planted

with a kind of inert resistance, and asked Miranda: “Arc

you the so-called dramatic critic on this hick news-

paper?”

“I’m afraid I am,” said Miranda.

“Well,” said the little man, “I’m just asking for one

minute of your valuable time.” His underlip shot out,

he began with shaking hands to fish about in his waist-

coat pocket. “I just hate to let you get away with it,

that’s all.”

He riffled through a collection of shabby

newspaper clippings. “Just give these the once-over, will

you? And then let me ask you if you think I’m gonna

stand for being knocked by a tanktown critic,” he said,

in a toneless voice; “look here, here’s Buffalo, Chicago.

Saint Looey, Philadelphia, Frisco, besides New York,

here’s the best publications in the business. Variety, the

Billy Guard, they all broke down and admitted that Danny

Dickerson knows his stuff. So you don’t think so, hey?

That’s all I wanta ask

you.”

“No, I don’t,” said Miranda, as bluntly as she could,

“and I can’t stop to talk about it.”

The little man leaned nearer, his voice shook as if he

had been nervous for a long time. “Look here, what was

there you didn’t like about me? Tell me that.”

Miranda said, “You shouldn’t pay any attention at all.

What does it matter what I think?”

“I don’t care what you think, it ain’t that,” said the

little man, “but these things get round and booking

agencies back East don’t know how it is out here. We

get panned in the sticks and they think it’s the same as

getting panned in Chicago, see? They don’t know the

difference. They don’t know that the more high class an

act is the more the hick critics pan it. But I’ve been

called the best in the business by the best in the busi-

ness and I wanta know what you think is wrong with

me.”

Chuck said, “Come on, Miranda, curtain’s going up.”

Miranda handed the little man his clippings, they were

mostly ten years old, and tried to edge past him. He

stepped before her again and said without much convic-

tion, “If you was a man I’d knock your block off.”

Chuck got up at that and lounged over, taking his hands

out of his pockets, and said, “Now you’ve done your

song and dance you’d better get out. Get the hell out

now before I throw you downstairs.”

The little man pulled at the top of his tie, a small blue

tie with red polka dots, slightly frayed at the knot. He

pulled it straight and repeated as if he had rehearsed it,

“Come out in the alley.” The tears filled his thickened

red lids. Chuck said, “Ah, shut up,” and followed

Miranda, who was running upwards the stairs. He over-

took her on the sidewalk. “I left him sniveling and shuf-

fling his publicity trying to find the joker,” said Chuck,

“the poor old heel.”

Miranda said, “There’s too much of everything in this

world just now. I’d like to sit down here on the curb.

Chuck, and die, and never again see— I wish I could lose

my memory and forget my ov\’n name … I wLsh— ”

Chuck said, “Toughen up, Miranda. This is no time

to cave in. Forget that fellow. For every hundred people

in show business, there are ninety-nine like him. But you

don’t manage right, anyway. You bring it on yourself.

All you have to do is play up the headliners, and you

needn’t even mention the also-rans. Try to keep in mind

that Rypinsky has got show business cornered in this

town; please Rypinsky and you’ll please the advertising

department, please them and you’ll get a raise. Hand-in-

glove, my poor dumb child, will you never learn?”

“I seem to keep learning all the wrong things,” said

Miranda, hopelessly.

“You do for a fact,” Chuck told her cheerfully. “You

are as good at it as I ever saw. Now do you feel better?”

“This is a rotten show you’ve invited me to,” said

Chuck. “Now what are you going to do about it? If I

were writing it up. I’d—”

“Do write it up,” said Mirandg. “You write it up this

time. I’m getting ready to leave, anyway, but don’t tell

anybody yet.”

“You mean it? All my life,” said Chuck, “I’ve yearned

to be a so-called dramatic critic on a hick newspaper,

and this is positively my first chance.”

“Better take it,” Miranda told him. “It may be your

last.” She thought, This is the beginning of the end of

something. Something terrible is going to happen to me.

I shan’t need bread and butter where I’m going. I’ll will

it to Chuck, he has a venerable father to buy hooch for.

I hope they let him have it. Oh, Adam, I hope 1 see you

once more before I go under with whatever is the mat-

ter with me. “I wish the war were over,” she said to

Chuck, as if they had been talking about that. “I wish

it were over and I wish it had never begun.”

Chuck had got out his pad and pencil and was already

writing his review. What she had said seemed safe

enough but how would he take it? “I don’t care how it

started or when it ends,” said Chuck, scribbling away,

“I’m not going to be t

here.”

All the rejected men talked like that, thought Miranda.

War was the one thing they wanted, now they couldn’t

have it. Maybe they had wanted badly to go, some of

them. All of them had a sidelong eye for the women

they talked with about it, a guarded resentment which

said, “Don’t pin a white feather on me, you bloodthirsty

female. I’ve offered my meat to the crows and they

won’t have it.” The worst thing about war for the stay-

at-homes is there isn’t anyone to talk to any more. The

Lusk Committee will get you if you don’t watch out.

Bread will win the war. Work will win, sugar will win,

peach pits will win the war. Nonsense. Not nonsense, I

tell you, there’s some kind of valuable high explosive to

be got out of peach pits. So all the happy housewives

hurry during the canning season to lay their baskets of

peach pits on the altar of their country. It keeps them

busy and makes them feel useful, and all these women

running wild with the men away are dangerous, if they

aren’t given something to keep their little minds out of

mischief. So rows of young girls, the intact cradles of the

future, with their pure serious faces framed becomingly

in Red Cross wimples, roll cock-eyed bandages that will

never reach a base hospital, and knit sweaters that will

never warm a manly chest, their minds dwelling lov-

ingly on all the blood and mud and the next dance at

the Acanthus Club for the officers of the flying corps.

Keeping still and quiet will win the war.

“I’m simply not going to be there,” said Chuck, ab-

sorbed in his review. No, Adam will be there, thought

Miranda. She slipped down in the chair and leaned her

head against the dusty plush, closed her eyes and faced

for one instant that was a lifetime the certain, the over-

whelming and awful knowledge that there was nothing

at all ahead for Adam and for her. Nothing. She opened

her eyes and held her hands together palms up, gazing

at them and trying to understand oblivion.

“Now look at this,” said Chuck, for the lights had

come on and the audience was rustling and talking again.

“I’ve got it all done, even before the headliner comes

on. It’s old Stella Mayhew, and she’s always good, she’s

been good for forty years, and she’s going to sing ‘O the

blues ain’t nothin’ but the easy-going heart disease.’

That’s all you need to know about her. Now just glance

over this. Would you be willing to sign it?”

Miranda took the pages and stared at them conscien-

tiously, turning them over, she hoped, at the right mo-

ment, and gave them back. “Yes, Chuck, yes. I’d sign

that. But I won’t. We must tell Bill you wrote it, because

it’s your start, maybe.”

“You don’t half appreciate it,” said Chuck. “You read

It too fast. Here, listen to this—” and he began to mutter

excitedly. While he was reading she watched his face.

It was a pleasant face with some kind of spark of life in

it, and a good severity in the modeling of the brow

above the nose. For the first time since she had known

him she wondered what Chuck was thinking about. He

looked preoccupied and unhappy, he wasn’t so frivolous

as he sounded. The people were crowding into the aisle,

bringing out their cigarette cases ready to strike a match

the instant they reached the lobby; women with waved

hair clutched at their wraps, men stretched their chins

to ease them of their stiff collars, and Chuck said, “We

might as well go now.” Miranda, buttoning her jacket,

stepped into the moving crowd, thinking. What did I

ever know about them? There must be a great many of

them here who think as I do, and we dare not say a word

to each other of our desperation, we are speechless ani-

mals letting ourselves be destroyed, and why? Does any-

body here believe the things we say to each other?

Stretched in unease on the ridge of the wicker couch

in the cloakroom, Miranda waited for time to pass and

leave Adam with her. Time seemed to proceed with

more than usual eccentricity, leaving twilight gaps in

her mind for thirty minutes which seemed like a second,

and then hard dashes of light that shone clearly on her

watch proving that three minutes is an intolerable stretch

of waiting, as if she were hanging by her thumbs. At

last it was reasonable to imagine Adam stepping out of

the house in the early darkness into the blue mist that

might soon be rain, he would be on the way, and there

was nothing to think about him, after all. There was

only the wish to see him and the fear, the present threat,

of not seeing him again; for every step they took to-

wards each other seemed perilous, drawing them apart

instead of together, as a swimmer in spite of his most

determined strokes is yet drawn slowly backward by

the tide. “I don’t want to love,” she would think in spite

of herself, “not Adam, there is no time and we are not

ready for if and yet this is all we have—”

And there he was on the sidewalk, with his foot on

the first step, and Miranda almost ran down to meet

him. Adam, holding her hands, asked, “Do you feel well

now? Are you hungry? Arc you tired? Will you feel

like dancing after the show?”

“Yes to everything,” said Miranda, “yes, yes. . . .”

Her head was like a feather, and she steadied herself on

his arm. The mist was still mist that might be rain later,

and though the air was sharp and clean in her mouth, it

did not, she decided, make breathing any easier. “I hope

the show is good, or at least funny,” she told him, “but I

promise nothing.”

It was a long, dreary play, but Adam and Miranda

sat very quietly together waiting patiently for it to be

over. Adam carefully and seriously pulled off her glove

and held her hand as if he were accustomed to holding

her hand in theaters. Once they turned and their eyes

met, but only once, and the two pairs of eyes were

equally steady and noncommittal. A deep tremor set up

in Miranda, and she set about resisting herself method-

ically as if she were closing windows and doors and

fastening down curtains against a rising stonii. Adam

sat watching the monotonous play with a strange shining

excitement, his face quite fixed and still.

When the curtain rose for the third act, the third

act did not take place at once. There was instead dis-

closed a backdrop almost covered with an American flag

improperly and disrespectfully exposed, nailed at each

upper comer, gathered in the middle and nailed again,

sagging dustily. Before it posed a local dollar-a-year

man, now doing his bit as a Liberty Bond salesman. He

was an ordinary man past middle life, with a neat little

melon buttoned into his trousers and waistcoat, an opin-

ionated tight mouth, a face and figure in which nothing

could be read save the inept sensual record of fifty years.

But for once in his life he was an important fellow in an

impressive situation, and he reveled, rolling his words

in an actorish tone.

“Looks like a penguin,” said Adam. They moved,

smiled at each other, Miranda reclaimed her hand, Adam

folded his together and they prepared to wear their way

again through the same old moldy speech with the same

old dusty backdrop. Miranda tried not to listen, but she

heard. These vile Huns— glorious Belleau Wood— our

keyword is Sacrifice— Martyred Belgium— give till it hurts

—our noble boys Over There— Big Berthas— the death of

civilization— the Boche—

“My head aches,” whispered Miranda. “Oh, why

won’t he hush?”

“He won’t,” whispered Adam. “I’ll get you some

aspirin.”

“In Flanders Field the poppies grow. Between the

crosses row on row”— “He’s getting into the home

stretch,” whispered Adam— atrocities, innocent babes

hoisted on Boche bayonets— your child and my child— if

our children are spared these things, then let us say with

all reverence that these dead have not died in vain— the

war, the war, the war to end war, war for Democracy,

for humanity, a safe world forever and ever— and to

prove our faith in Democracy to each other, and to the

world, let everybody get together and buy Liberty

Bonds and do without sugar and wool socks— was that

it?” Miranda asked herself. Say that over, I didn’t catch

the last line. Did you mention Adam? If you didn’t I’m

not interested. What about Adam, you little pig? And

what are we going to sing this time, “Tipperary” or

“There’s a Long, Long Trail”? Oh, please do let the

show go on and get over with. I must write a piece

about it before I can go dancing with Adam and we

have no time. Coal, oil, iron, gold, international finance,

why don’t you tell us about them, you little liar?

The audience rose and sang, “There’s a Long, Long

Trail A- winding,” their opened mouths black and faces

pallid in the reflected footlights; some of the faces gri-

maced and wept and had shining streaks like snail’s

tracks on them. Adam and Miranda Joined in at the

tops of their voices, grinning shamefacedly at each other

once or twice.

In the street, they lit their cigarettes and walked

slowly as always. “Just another nasty old man who

would like to see the young ones killed,” said Miranda

in a low voice; “the tomcats try to eat the little tom-

kittens, you know. They don’t fool you really, do they,

Adam?”

The young people were talking like that about the

business by then. They felt they were seeing pretty

clearly through that game. She went on, “I hate these

potbellied baldheads, too fat, too old, too cowardly, to

go to war themselves, they know they’re safe; it’s you

they are sending instead—”

Adam turned eyes of genuine surprise upon her. “Oh,

that one,” he said. “Now what could the poor sap do

if they did take him? It’s not his fault,” he explained,

“he can’t do anything but talk.” His pride in his youth,

his forbearance and tolerance and contempt for that un-

lucky being breathed out of his very pores as he strolled,

straight and relaxed in his strength. “What could you

expect of him, Miranda?”

She spoke his name often, and he spoke hers rarely.

The little shock of pleasure the sound of her name in

his mouth gave her stopped her answer. For a moment

she hesitated, and began at another point of attack.

“Adam,” she said, “the worst of war is the fear and sus-

picion and the awful expression in all the eyes you meet

… as if they had pulled down the shutters over their

minds and their hearts and were peering out at you,

ready to leap if you make one gesture or say one word

they do not understand instantly. It frightens me; I live

in fear too, and no one should have to live in fear. It’s

the skulking about, and the lying. It’s what war does to

the mind and the heart, Adam, and you can’t separate

these two— what it does to them is worse than what it

can do to the body.”

Adam said soberly, after a moment, “Oh, yes, but

suppose one comes back whole? The mind and the heart

sometimes get another chance, but if anything happens

to the poor old human frame, why, it’s just out of luck,

that’s all.”

“Oh, yes,” mimicked Miranda. “It’s just out of luck,

that’s all.”

“If I didn’t go,” said Adam, in a matter-of-fact voice,

“I couldn’t look myself in the face.”

So that’s all settled. With her fingers flattened on his

arm, Miranda was silent, thinking about Adam. No,

there was no resentment or revolt in him. Pure, she

thought, all the way through, flawless, complete, as the

sacrificial lamb must be. The sacrificial lamb strode

along casually, accommodating his long pace to hers,

keeping her on the inside of the walk in the good Ameri-

can style, helping her across street corners as if she were

a cripple— “I hope we don’t come to a mud puddle.

he’ll carry me over it”— giving off whiffs of tobacco

smoke, a manly smell of scentless soap, freshly cleaned

leather and freshly washed skin, breathing through his

nose and carrying his chest easily. He threw back his

head and smiled into the sky which still misted, promis-

ing rain. “Oh, boy,” he said, “what a night. Can’t you

hurry that review of yours so we can get started?”

He waited for her before a cup of coffee in the restau-

rant next to the pressroom, nicknamed The Greasy

Spoon. When she came down at last, freshly washed and

combed and powdered, she saw Adam first, sitting near

the dingy big window, face turned to the street, but

looking down. It was an extraordinary face, smooth and

fine and golden in the shabby light, but now set in a

blind melancholy, a look of pained suspense and disillu-

sion. For just one split second she got a glimpse of Adam

when he would have been older, the face of the man he

would not live to be. He saw her then, rose, and the

bright glow was there.

Adam pulled their chairs together at their table; they

drank hot tea and listened to the orchestra jazzing “Pack

Up Your Troubles.”

“In an old kit bag, and smoil, smoil, smoil,” shouted

half a dozen boys under the draft age, gathered around

a table near the orchestra. They yelled incoherently,

laughed in great hysterical bursts of something that ap-

peared to be merriment, and passed around under the

tablecloth flat bottles containing a clear liquid— for in

this western city founded and built by roaring drunken

miners, no one was allowed to take his alcohol openly-

splashed it into their tumblers of ginger ale, and went on

singing, “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.” When the

tune changed to “Miranda,” Adam said, “Let’s dance.”

It was a tawdry little place, crowded and hot and full

of smoke, but there was nothing better. The music was

gay; and life is completely crazy anyway, thought

Miranda, so what does it matter? This is what we have,

Adam and I, this is all we’re going to get, this is the way

it is with us. She wanted to say, “Adam, come out of

your dream and listen to me. I have pains in my chest

and my head and my heart and they’re real. I am in

pain all over, and you are in such danger as I can’t bear

to think about, and why can we not save each other?”

When her hand tightened on his shoulder his arm tight-

ened about her waist instantly, and stayed there, holding

firmly. They said nothing but smiled continually at each

other, odd changing smiles as though they had found a

new language. Miranda, her face near Adam’s shoulder,

noticed a dark young pair sitting at a corner table, each

with an arm around the waist of the other, their heads

together, their eyes staring at the same thing, whatever

it was, that hovered in space before them. Her right

hand lay on the table, his hand over it, and her face was

a blur with weeping. Now and then he raised her hand

and kissed it, and set it down and held it, and her eyes

would fill again. They were not shameless, they had

merely forgotten where they were, or they had no other

place to go, perhaps. They said not a word, and the

small pantomime repeated itself, like a melancholy short

film running monotonously over and over again. Mi-

randa envied them. She envied that girl. At least she

can weep if that helps, and he does not even have to

ask. What is the matter? Tell me. They had cups of

coffee before them, and after a long while— Miranda and

Adam had danced and sat down again twice— when the

coffee was quite cold, they drank it suddenly, then em-

braced as before, without a word and scarcely a glance

at each other. Something was done and settled between

them, at least; it was enviable, enviable, that they could

sit quietly together and have the same expression on

their faces while they looked into the hell they shared,

no matter what kind of hell, it was theirs, they were to-

gether.

At the table nearest Adam and Miranda a young

woman was leaning on her elbow, telling her young man

a story. “And I don’t like him because he’s too fresh.

He kept on asking me to take a drink and I kept telling

him, I don’t drink and he said, Now look here, I want a

drink the worst way and I think it’s mean of you not

to drink with me, I can’t sit up here and drink by my-

self, he said. I told him. You’re not by yourself in the

first place; I like that, I said, and if you want a drink

go ahead and have it, I told him, why drag vie in? So he

called the waiter and ordered ginger ale and two glasses

and I drank straight ginger ale like I always do but he

poured a shot of hooch in his. He was awfully proud

of that hooch, said he made it himself out of potatoes.

Nice homemade likker, warm from the pipe, he told

me, three drops of this and your ginger ale will taste

like Mumm’s Extry. But I said. No, and I mean no, can’t

you get that through your bean? He took another drink

and said. Ah, come on, honey, don’t be so stubborn,

this’ll make your shimmy shake. So I just got tired of the

argument, and I said, I don’t need to drink, to shake my

shimmy, I can strut my stuff on tea, I said. Well, why

don’t you then, he wanted to know, and I Just told

him-”

She knew she had been asleep for a long time when all

at once without even a warning footstep or creak of

the door hinge, Adam was in the room turning on the

light, and she knew it was he, though at first she was

blinded and turned her head away. He came over at

once and sat on the side of the bed and began to talk

as if he were going on with something they had been

talking about before. lie crumpled a square of paper

and tossed it in the fireplace.

“You didn’t get my note,” he said. “I left it under the

door. I was called back suddenly to camp for a lot of in-

oculations. They kept me longer than I expected, I was

late. I called the office and they told me you were not

coming in today. I called Miss Hobbe here and she said

you were in bed and couldn’t come to the telephone.

Did she give you my message?”

“No,” said Miranda drowsily, “but I think I have

been asleep all day. Oh, I do remember. There was a

doctor here. Bill sent him. I was at the telephone once,

for Bill told me he would send an ambulance and have

me taken to the hospital. The doctor tapped my chest

and left a prescription and said he would be back, but he

hasn’t come.”

“Where is it, the prescription?” asked Adam.

“I don’t know. He left it, though, I saw him.”

Adam moved about searching the tables and the man-

telpiece. “Here it is,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few

minutes. I must look for an all-night drug store. It’s after

one o’clock. Good-by.”

Good-by, good-by. Miranda watched the door where

he had disappeared for quite a while, then closed her

eyes, and thought, When I am not here I cannot remem-

ber anything about this room where I have lived for

nearly a year, except that the curtains are too thin and

there was never any way of shutting out the morning

light. Miss Hobbe had promised heavier curtains, but they

had never appeared When Miranda in her dressing gown

had been at the telephone that morning. Miss Hobbe

had passed through, carrying a tray. She was a little red-

haired nervously friendly creature, and her manner said

all too plainly that the place was not paying and she

was on the ragged edge.

“My dear child,” she said sharply, with a glance at

Miranda’s attire, “what is the matter?”

Miranda, with the receiver to her ear, said, “Influenza,

I think.”

“Horrors,” said Miss Hobbe, in a whisper, and the

tray wavered in her hands. “Go back to bed at once

… go at oncer

“I must talk to Bill first,” Miranda had told her, and

Miss Hobbe had hurried on and had not returned. Bill

had shouted directions at her, promising everything,

doctor, nurse, ambulance, hospital, her check every week

as usual, everything, but she was to get back to bed and

stay there. She dropped into bed, thinking that Bill was

the only person she had ever seen who actually tore his

own hair when he was excited enough … I suppose

I should ask to be sent home, she thought, it’s a respect-

able old custom to inflict your death on the family if

you can manage it. No, I’ll stay here, this is my busi-

ness, but not in this room, I hope … I wish I were in

the cold mountains in the snow, that’s what I should like

best; and all about her rose the measured ranges of the

Rockies wearing their perpetual snow, their majestic

blue laurels of cloud, chilling her to the bone with their

sharp breath. Oh, no, I must have warmth— and her

memory turned and roved after another place she had

known first and loved best, that now she could see only

in drifting fragments of palm and cedar, dark shadows

and a sky that warmed without dazzling, as this strange

sky had dazzled without warming her; there was the

long slow wavering of gray moss in the drowsy oak

shade, the spacious hovering of buzzards overhead, the

smell of crushed water herbs along a bank, and with-

out warning a broad tranquil river into which flowed

all the rivers she had known. The walls shelved away

in one deliberate silent movement on either side, and a

tall sailing ship was moored near by, with a gangplank

weathered to blackness touching the foot of her bed.

Back of the ship was jungle, and even as it appeared be-

fore her, she knew it was all she had ever read or had

been told or felt or thought about jungles; a writhing

terribly alive and secret place of death, creeping with

tangles of spotted serpents, rainbow-colored birds with

malign eyes, leopards with humanly wise faces and ex-

travagantly crested lions; screaming long-armed mon-

keys tumbling among broad fleshy leaves that glowed

with sulphur-colored light and exuded the ichor of

death, and rotting trunks of unfamiliar trees sprawled

in crawling slime. Without surprise, watching from her

pillow, she saw herself run swiftly down this gangplank

to the slanting deck, and standing there, she leaned on

the rail and waved gaily to herself in bed, and the slender

ship spread its wings and sailed away into the jungle.

The air trembled with the shattering scream and the

hoarse bellow of voices all crying together, rolling and

colliding above her like ragged stormclouds, and the

words became two words only rising and falling and

clamoring about her head. Danger, danger, danger, the

voices said, and War, war, war. There was her door half

open, Adam standing with his hand on the knob, and

Miss Hobbe with her face all out of shape with terror

was crying shrilly, “I tell you, they must come for her

now, or I’ll put her on the sidewalk … I tell you, this

is a plague, a plague, my God, and I’ve got a houseful

of people to think about!”

Adam said, “I know that. They’ll come for her to-

morrow morning.”

“Tomorrow morning, my God, they’d better come

now! ’

“They can’t get an ambulance,” said Adam, “and

there aren’t any beds. And we can’t find a doctor or a

nurse. They’re all busy. That’s all there is to it. You

stay out of the room, and I’ll look after her.”

“Yes, you’ll look after her, I can see that,” said Miss

Hobbe, in a particularly unpleasant tone.

“Yes, that’s what I said,” answered Adam, drily, “and

you keep out.”

He closed the door carefully. He was carrying an as-

sortment of misshapen packages, and his face was as-

tonishingly impassive.

“Did you hear that?” he asked, leaning over and

speaking very quietly.

“Most of it,” said Miranda, “it’s a nice prospect, isn’t

it?”

“I’ve got your medicine,” said Adam, “and you’re to

begin with it this minute. She can’t put you out.”

“So it’s really as bad as that,” said Miranda.

“It’s as bad as anything can be,” said Adam, “all the

theaters and nearly all the shops and restaurants are

closed, and the streets have been full of funerals all day

and ambulances all night—”

“But not one for me,” said Miranda, feeling hilarious

and lightheaded. She sat up and beat her pillow into

shape and reached for her robe. “I’m glad you’re here,

I’ve been having a nightmare. Give me a cigarette, will

you, and light one for yourself and open all the windows

and sit near one of them. You’re running a risk,” she

told him, “don’t you know that? Why do you do it?”

“Never mind,” said Adam, “take your medicine,” and

offered her two large cherry-colored pills. She swal-

lowed them promptly and instantly vomited them up.

“Do excuse me,” she said, beginning to laugh. “I’m so

sorry.” Adam without a word and with a very con-

cerned expression washed her face with a wet towel,

gave her some cracked ice from one of the packages, and

firmly offered her two more pills. “That’s what they

always did at home,” she explained to him, “and it

worked.” Crushed with humiliation, she put her hands

over her face and laughed again, painfully.

“There are two more kinds yet,” said Adam, pulling

her hands from her face and lifting her chin. “You’ve

hardly begun. And I’ve got other things, like orange

juice and ice cream— they told me to feed you ice cream

—and coffee in a thermos bottle, and a thermometer.

You have to work through the whole lot so you’d better

take it easy.”

“This time last night we were dancing,” said Miranda,

and drank something from a spoon. Her eyes followed

him about the room, as he did things for her with an

absent-minded face, like a man alone; now and again

he would come back, and slipping his hand under her

head, would hold a cup or a tumbler to her mouth, and

she drank, and followed him with her eyes again, with-

out a clear notion of what was happening.

“Adam,” she said, “I’ve just thought of something.

Maybe they forgot St. Luke’s Hospital. Call the sisters

there and ask them not to be so selfish with their silly

old rooms. Tell them I only want a very small dark ugly

one for three days, or less. Do try them, Adam.”

He believed, apparently, that she was still more or

less in her right mind, for she heard him at the telephone

explaining in his deliberate voice. He was back again

almost at once, saying, “This seems to be my day for

getting mixed up with peevish old maids. The sister said

that even if they had a room you couldn’t have it with-

out doctor’s orders. But they didn’t have one, anyway.

She was pretty sour about it.”

“Well,” said Miranda in a thick voice, “I think that’s

abominably rude and mean, don’t you?” She sat up with

a wide gesture of both arms, and began to retch again,

violently.

“Hold it, as you were,” called Adam, fetching the

basin. He held her head, washed her face and hands

with ice water, put her head straight on the pillow, and

went over and looked out of the window. “Well,” he

said at last, sitting beside her again, “they haven’t got a

room. They haven’t got a bed. They haven’t even got a

baby crib, the way she talked. So I think that’s straight

enough, and we may as well dig in.”

“Isn’t the ambulance coming?”

“Tomorrow, maybe.”

He took off his tunic and hung it on the back of a

chair. Kneeling before the fireplace, he began carefully

to set kindling sticks in the shape of an Indian tepee,

with a little paper in the center for them to lean upon.

He lighted this and placed other sticks upon them, and

larger bits of wood. When they were going nicely he

added still heavier wood, and coal a few lumps at a time,

until there was a good blaze, and a fire that would not

need rekindling. He rose and dusted his hands together,

the fire illuminated him from the back and his hair

shone.

“Adam,” said Miranda, “I think you’re very beau-

tiful.” He laughed out at this, and shook his head at her.

“What a hell of a word,” he said, “for me.” “It was the

first that occurred to me,” she said, drawing up on her

elbow to catch the warmth of the blaze. “That’s a good

job, that fire.”

He sat on the bed again, dragging up a chair and put-

ting his feet on the rungs. They smiled at each other

for the first time since he had come in that night. “How

do you feel now?” he asked.

“Better, much better,” she told him. “Let’s talk. Let’s

tell each other what we meant to do.”

“You tell me first,” said Adam. “I want to know about

you.”

“You’d get the notion I had a very sad life,” she said,

“and perhaps it was, but I’d be glad enough to have it

now. If I could have it back, it would be easy to be

happy about almost anything at all. That’s not true, but

that’s the way I feel now.” After a pause, she said,

“There’s nothing to tell, after all, if it ends now, for all

this time I was getting ready for something that was

going to happen later, when the time came. So now it’s

nothing much.”

“But it must have been worth having until now,

wasn’t it?” he asked seriously as if it were something

important to know.

“Not if this is all,” she repeated obstinately.

“Weren’t you ever— happy?” asked Adam, and he was

plainly afraid of the word; he was shy of it as he was

of the word love, he seemed never to have spoken it be-

fore, and was uncertain of its sound or meaning.

“I don’t know,” she said, “I just lived and never

thought about it. I remember things I liked, though, and

things I hoped for.”

“I was going to be an electrical engineer,” said Adam.

He stopped short. “And I shall finish up when I get

back,” he added, after a moment.

“Don’t you love being alive?” asked Miranda. “Don’t

you love weather and the colors at different times of

the day, and all the sounds and noises like children

screaming in the next lot, and automobile horns and

little bands playing in the street and the smell of food

cooking?”

“I love to swim, too,” said Adam.

“So do I,” said Miranda; “we never did swim to-

gether.”

“Do you remember any prayers?” she asked him sud-

denly. “Did you ever learn anything at Sunday School? ”

“Not much,” confessed Adam without contrition.

“Well, the Lord’s Prayer.”

“Yes, and there’s Hail Mary,” she said, “and the really

useful one beginning, I confess to Almighty God and to

blessed Mary ever virgin and to the holy Apostles Peter

and Paul—”

“Catholic,” he commented.

“Prayers just the same, you big Methodist. I’ll bet you

are a Methodist.”

“No, Presbyterian.”

“Well, what others do you remember?”

“Now I lay me down to sleep—” said Adam.

“Yes, that one, and Blessed Jesus meek and mild— you

see that my religious education wasn’t neglected either. I

even know a prayer beginning O Apollo. Want ttf

hear it?”

“No,” said Adam, “you’re making fun.”

“I’m not,” said Miranda, “I’m trying to keep from

going to sleep. I’m afraid to go to sleep, I may not wake

up. Don’t let me go to sleep, Adam. Do you know Mat-

thew, Mark, Luke and John? Bless the bed I lie upon?”

“If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my

soul to take. Is that it?” asked Adam. “It doesn’t sound

right, somehow.”

“Light me a cigarette, please, and move over and sit

near the window. We keep forgetting about fresh air.

You must have it.” He lighted the cigarette and held it

to her lips. She took it between her fingers and dropped

it under the edge of her pillow. He found it and crushed

it out in the saucer under the water tumbler. Her head

swam in darkness for an instant, cleared, and she sat up

in panic, throwing off the covers and breaking into a

sweat. Adam leaped up with an alarmed face, and al-

most at once was holding a cup of hot coffee to her

mouth.

“You must have some too,” she told him. quiet again,

and they sat huddled together on the edge of the bed,

drinking coffee in silence.

Adam said, “You must lie down again. You’re awake

now.”

“Let’s sing,” said Miranda. ‘ I know an old spiritual,

I can remember some of the words.” She spoke in a nat-

ural voice. “I’m fine now.” She began in a hoarse whis-

per, “ ‘Pale horse, pale rider, done taken my lover away

. . .’ Do you know that song?”

“Yes,” said Adam, “I heard Negroes in Texas sing it,

in an oil field.”

“I heard them sing it in a cotton field,” she said; “it’s

a good song.”

They sang that line together. “But I can’t remember

what comes next,” said Adam.

“ ‘Pale horse, pale rider,’ ” said Miranda, “(We really

need a good banjo) ‘done taken my lover away—’ ” Her

voice cleared and she said, “But we ought to get on

with it. What’s the next line?”

“There’s a lot more to it than that,” said Adam,

“about forty verses, the rider done taken away mammy,

pappy, brother, sister, the whole family besides the

lover-”

“But not the singer, not yet,” said Miranda. “Death

always leaves one singer to mourn. ‘Death,’ ” she sang,

“ ‘oh, leave one singer to mourn—’ ”

“ ‘Pale horse, pale rider,’ ” chanted Adam, coming in

on the beat, ‘“done taken my lover away!’ (I think

we’re good, I think we ought to get up an act—)”

‘‘Go in Hut Service,” said Miranda, “entertain the

poor defenseless heroes Over There.”

“We’ll play banjos,” said Adam; “I always wanted to

play the banjo.”

Miranda sighed, and lay back on the pillow and

thought, I must give up, I can’t hold out any longer.

There was only that pain, only that room, and only

Adam. There were no longer any multiple planes of liv-

ing, no tough filaments of memory and hope pulling taut

backwards and forwards holding her upright between

them. There was only this one moment and it was a

dream of time, and Adam’s face, very near hers, eyes

still and intent, was a shadow, and there was to be noth-

ing more. . . .

“Adam,” she said out of the heavy soft darkness that

drew her down, down, “I love you, and I was hoping

you would say that to me, too.”

He lay down beside her with his arm under her shoul-

der, and pressed his smooth face against hers, his mouth

moved towards her mouth and stopped. “Can you hear

what I am saying? . . . What do you think I have been

trying to tell you all this time?”

She turned towards him, the cloud cleared and she

saw his face for an instant. He pulled the covers about

her and held her, and said, “Go to sleep, darling, darling,

if you will go to sleep now for one hour I will wake you

up and bring you hot coffee and tomorrow we will find

somebody to help. I love you, go to sleep—”

Almost with no warning at all, she floated into the

darkness, holding his hand, in sleep that was not sleep

but clear evening light in a small green wood, an angry

dangerous wood full of inhuman concealed voices sing-

ing sharply like the whine of arrows and she saw Adam

transfixed by a flight of these singing arrows that struck

him in the heart and passed shrilly cutting their path

through the leaves. Adam fell straight back before her

eyes, and rose again unwounded and alive; another flight

of arrows loosed from the invisible bow struck him

again and he fell, and yet he was there before her un-

touched in a perpetual death and resurrection. She threw

herself before him, angrily and selfishly she interposed

between him and the track of the arrow, crying, No,

no, like a child cheated in a game. It’s my turn now,

why must you always be the one to die? and the arrows

struck her cleanly through the heart and through his

body and he lay dead, and she still lived, and the wood

whistled and sang and shouted, every branch and leaf

and blade of grass had its own terrible accusing voice.

She ran then, and Adam caught her in the middle of

the room, running, and said, “Darling, I must have been

asleep too. What happened, you screamed terribly?”

After he had helped her to settle again, she sat with

her knees drawn up under her chin, resting her head on

her folded arms and began carefully searching for her

words because it was important to explain clearly. “It

was a very odd sort of dream, I don’t know why it could

have frightened me. There was something about an old-

fashioned valentine. There were two hearts carved on a

tree, pierced by the same arrow— you know, Adam—”

“Yes, I know, honey,” he said in the gentlest sort of

way, and sat kissing her on the cheek and forehead with

a kind of accustomedness, as if he had been kissing her

for years, “one of those lace paper things.”

“Yes, and yet they were alive, and were us, you un-

derstand— this doesn’t seem to be quite the way it was,

but it was something like that. It was in a wood—”

“Yes,” said Adam. He got up and put on his tunic

and gathered up the thermos bottle. “I’m going back to

that little stand and get us some ice cream and hot

coffee,” he told her, “and I’ll be back in five minutes,

and you keep quiet. Good-by for five minutes,” he said,

holding her chin in the palm of his hand and trying to

catch her eye, “and you be very quiet.”

“Good-by,” she said. “I’m awake again.” But she was

not, and the two alert young internes from the County

hospital who had arrived, after frantic urgings from the

noisy city editor of the Blue Mountain News, to carry

her away in a police ambulance, decided that they had

better go down and get the stretcher. Their voices

roused her, she sat up, got out of bed at once and stood

glancing about brightly. “Why, you’re all right,” said

the darker and stouter of the two young men, both ex-

tremely fit and competent-looking in their white clothes,

each with a flower in his buttonhole. “I’ll just carry

you.” He unfolded a white blanket and wrapped it

around her. She gathered up the folds and asked, “But

where is Adam?” taking hold of the doctor’s arm. He

laid a hand on her drenched forehead, shook his head,

and gave her a shrewd look. “Adam?”

“Yes,” Miranda told him, lowering her voice confi-

dentially, “he was here and now he is gone.”

“Oh, he’ll be back,” the interne told her easily, “he’s

just gone round the block to get cigarettes. Don’t worry

about Adam. He’s the least of your troubles.”

“Will he know where to find me?” she asked, still

holding back.

“We’ll leave him a note,” said the interne. “Come

now, it’s time we got out of here.”

He lifted and swung h.er up to his shoulder. “I feel

very badly,” she told him; “I don’t know why.”

“I’ll bet you do,” said he, stepping out carefully, the

other doctor going before them, and feeling for the first

step of the stairs. “Put your arms around my neck,” he

instructed her. “It won’t do you any harni and it’s a

great help to me.”

“What’s your name?” Miranda asked as the other doc-

tor opened the front door and they stepped out into the

frosty sweet air.

“Hildesheim,” he said, in the tone of one humoring

a child.

“Well, Dr. Hildesheim, aren’t we in a pretty mess?”

“We certainly are,” said Dr. Hildesheim.

The second young interne, still quite fresh and dapper

in his white coat, though his carnation was withering

at the edges, was leaning over listening to her breathing

through a stethoscope, whistling thinly, “There’s a Long,

Long Trail—” From time to time he tapped her ribs

smartly with two fingers, whistling. Miranda observed

him for a few moments until she fixed his bright busy

hazel eye not four inches from hers. “I’m not uncon-

scious,” she explained, “I know what I want to say.”

Then to her horror she heard herself babbling nonsense,

knowing it was nonsense though she could not hear

what she was saying. The flicker of attention in the eye

near her vanished, the second interne went on tapping

and listening, hissing softly under his breath.

“I wish you’d stop whistling,” she said clearly. The

sound stopped. “It’s a beastly tune,” she added. Any-

thing, anything at all to keep her small hold on the life

of human beings, a clear line of communication, no mat-

ter what, between her and the receding world. “Please

let me see Dr. Hildesheim,” she said, “I have something

important to say to him. I must say it now.” The second

(nteme vanished. He did not walk away, he fled into

the air without a sound, and Dr. Hildesheim’s face ap-

peared in his stead.

“Dr. Hildesheim, I want to ask you about Adam.”

“That young man? He’s been here, and left you a

note, and has gone again,” said Dr. Hildesheim, “and

he’ll be back tomorrow and the day after.” His tone

was altogether too merry and flippant.

“I don’t believe you,” said Miranda, bitterly, closing

her lips and eyes and hoping she might not weep.

“Miss Tanner,” called the doctor, “have you got that

-lote?”

Miss Tanner appeared beside her, handed her an un-

sealed envelope, took it back, unfolded the note and gave

it to her.

“I can’t see it,” said Miranda, after a pained search of

the page full of hasty scratches in black ink.

“Here, I’ll read it,” said Miss Tanner. “It says, ‘They

came and took you while I was away and now they will

not let me see you. Maybe tomorrow they will, with my

love, Adam,’ ” read Miss Tanner in a firm dry voice,

pronouncing the words distinctly. “Now, do you see?”

she asked soothingly.

Miranda, hearing the words one by one, forgot them

one by one. “Oh, read it again, what does it say?” she

called out over the silence that pressed upon her, reach-

ing towards the dancing words that just escaped as she

almost touched them. “That will do,” said Dr. Hilde-

sheim, calmly authoritarian. “Where is that bed?”

“There is no bed yet,” said Miss Tanner, as if she

said. We are short of oranges. Dr. Hildesheim said,

“Well, we’ll manage something,” and Miss Tanner drew

the narrow trestle with bright crossed metal supports

and small rubbery wheels into a deep jut of the corridor,

out of the way of the swift white figures darting about,

whirling and skimming like water flies all in silence. The

white walls rose sheer as cliffs, a dozen frosted moons

followed each other in perfect self-possession down a

white lane and dropped mutely one by one into a snowy

abyss.

What is this whiteness and silence but the absence of

pain? Miranda lay lifting the nap of her white blanket

softly between eased fingers, watching a dance of tall

deliberate shadows moving behind a wide screen of

sheets spread upon a frame. It was there, near her, on

her side of the wall where she could see it clearly and

enjoy it, and it was so beautiful she had no curiosity as

to its meaning. Two dark figures nodded, bent, curtsied

to each other, retreated and bowed again, lifted long

arms and spread great hands against the white shadow

of the screen; then with a single round movement, the

sheets were folded back, disclosing two speechless men

in white, standing, and another speechless man in white,

lying on the bare springs of a white iron bed. The man

on the springs was swathed smoothly from head to foot

in white, with folded bands across the face, and a large

stiff bow like merry rabbit ears dangled at the crown of

his head.

The two living men lifted a mattress standing hunched

against the wall, spread it tenderly and exactly over the

dead man. Wordless and white they vanished down the

corridor, pushing the wheeled bed before them. It had

been an entrancing and leisurely spectacle, but now it

was over. A pallid white fog rose in their wake insin-

uatingly and floated before Miranda’s eyes, a fog in

which was concealed all terror and all weariness, all the

wrung faces and twisted backs and broken feet of

abused, outraged living things, all the shapes of their

confused pain and their estranged hearts; the fog might

part at any moment and loose the horde of human tor-

ments. She put up her hands and said, Not yet, not yet,

hut it was too late. The fog parted and two executioners,

white clad, moved towards her pushing between them

with marvelously deft and practiced hands the mis-

shapen figure of an old man in filthy rags whose scanty

beard waggled under his opened mouth as he bowed his

back and braced his feet to resist and delay the fate they

had prepared for him. In a high weeping voice he was

trying to explain to them that the crime of which he was

accused did not merit the punishment he was about to

receive; and except for this whining cry there was si-

lence as they advanced. The soiled cracked bowls of

the old man’s hands were held before him beseechingly

as a beggar’s as he said, “Before God I am not guilty,”

but they held his arms and drew him onward, passed,

and were gone.

The road to death is a long march beset with all evils,

and the heart fails little by little at each new terror, the

bones rebel at each step, the mind sets up its own bitter

resistance and to what end? The barriers sink one by

one, and no covering of the eyes shuts out the land-

scape of disaster, nor the sight of crimes committed

there. Across the field came Dr. Hildesheim, his face a

skull beneath his German helmet, carrying a naked in-

fant writhing on the point of his bayonet, and a huge

stone pot marked Poison in Gothic letters. He stopped

before the well that Miranda remembered in a pasture

on her father’s farm, a well once dry but now bubbling

with living water, and into its pure depths he threw the

child and the poison, and the violated water sank back

soundlessly into the earth. Miranda, screaming, ran with

her arms above her head; her voice echoed and came

back to her like a wolf’s howl, Hildesheim is a Boche, a

spy, a Hun, kill him, kill him before he kills you. . . .

She woke howling, she heard the foul words accusing

Dr. Hildesheim tumbling from her mouth; opened her

eyes and knew she was in a bed in a small white room,

with Dr. Hildesheim sitting beside her, two firm fingers

on her pulse. His hair was brushed sleekly and his but-

tonhole flower was fresh. Stars gleamed through the

window, and Dr. Hildesheim seemed to be gazing at

them with no particular expression, his stethoscope dan-

gling around his neck. Miss Tanner stood at the foot of

the bed writing something on a chart.

“Hello,” said Dr. Hildesheim, “at least you take it out

in shouting. You don’t try to get out of bed and go

running around.” Miranda held her eyes open with a

terrible effort, saw his rather heavy, patient face clearly

even as her mind tottered and slithered again, broke

from its foundation and spun like a cast wheel in a ditch.

“I didn’t mean it, I never believed it. Dr. Hildesheim,

you musn’t remember it—” and was gone again, not be-

ing able to wait for an answer.

The wrong she had done followed her and haunted

her dream: this wrong took vague shapes of horror she

could not recognize or name, though her heart cringed

at sight of them. Her mind, split in two, acknowledged

and denied what she saw in the one instant, for across

an abyss of complaining darkness her reasoning coherent

self watched the strange frenzy of the other coldly, re-

luctant to admit the truth of its visions, its tenacious re-

morses and despairs.

“I know those are your hands,” she told Miss Tanner,

“I know it, but to me they are white tarantulas, don’t

touch me.”

“Shut your eyes,” said Miss Tanner.

“Oh, no,” said Miranda, “for then I see worse things,”

but her eyes closed in spite of her will, and the mid-

night of her internal torment closed about her.

Oblivion, thought Miranda, her mind feeling among

her memories of words she had been taught to describe

the unseen, the unknowable, is a whirlpool of gray water

turning upon itself for all eternity . . . eternity is per-

haps more than the distance to the farthest star. She lay

on a narrow ledge over a pit that she knew to be bot-

tomless, though she could not comprehend it; the ledge

was her childhood dream of danger, and she strained

back against a reassuring wall of granite at her shoul-

ders, staring into the pit, thinking, There it is, there it

is at last, it is very simple; and soft carefully shaped

words like oblivion and eternity are curtains hung be-

fore nothing at all. I shall not know when it happens,

I shall not feel or remember, why can’t I consent now,

I am lost, there is no hope for me. Look, she told herself,

there it is, that is death and there is nothing to fear. But

she could not consent, still shrinking stiffly against the

granite wall that Avas her childhood dream of safety,

breathing slowly for fear of squandering breath, saying

desperately, Look, don’t be afraid, it is nothing, it is only

eternity.

Granite walls, whirlpools, stars are things. None of

them is death, nor the image of it. Death is death, said

Miranda, and for the dead it has no attributes. Silenced

she sank easily through deeps under deeps of darkness

until she lay like a stone at the farthest bottom of life,

knowing herself to be blind, deaf, speechless, no longer

aware of the members of her own body, entirely with-

drawn from all human concerns, yet alive with a pecul-

iar lucidity and coherence; all notions of the mind, the

reasonable inquiries of doubt, all ties of blood and the

desires of the heart, dissolved and fell away from her,

and there remained of her only a minute fiercely burn-

ing particle of being that knew itself alone, that relied

upon nothing beyond itself for its strength; not sus-

ceptible to any appeal or inducement, being itself com-

posed entirely of one single motive, the stubborn will

to live. This fiery motionless particle set itself unaided

to resist destruction, to survive and to be in its own

madness of being, motiveless and planless beyond that

one essential

end.

Trust me, the hard unwinking angry

point of light said. Trust me. I stay.

At once it grew, flattened, thinned to a fine radiance,

spread like a great fan and curved out into a rainbow

through which Miranda, enchanted, altogether believ-

ing, looked upon a deep clear landscape of sea and sand,

of soft meadow and sky, freshly washed and glistening

with transparencies of blue. Why, of course, of course,

said Miranda, without surprise but with serene rapture

as if some promise made to her had been kept long after

she had ceased to hope for it. She rose from her narrow

ledge and ran lightly through the tall portals of the great

bow that arched in its splendor over the burning blue of

the sea and the cool green of the meadow on either hand.

The small waves rolled in and over unhurriedly,

lapped upon the sand in silence and retreated; the grasses

flurried before a breeze that made no sound. Moving

towards her leisurely as clouds through the shimmering

air came a great company of human beings, and Miranda

saw in an amazement of joy that they were all the living

she had known. Their faces were transfigured, each in its

own beauty, beyond what she remembered of them,

their eyes were clear and untroubled as good weather,

and they cast no shadows. They were pure identities

and she knew them every one without calling their

names or remembering what relation she bore to them.

They surrounded her smoothly on silent feet, then

turned their entranced faces again towards the sea, and

she moved among them easily as a wave among waves.

The drifting circle widened, separated, and each figure

was alone but not solitary; Miranda, alone too, ques-

tioning nothing, desiring nothing, in the quietude of her

ecstasy, stayed where she was, eyes fixed on the over-

whelming deep sky where it was always morning.

Lying at ease, arms under her head, in the prodigal

warmth which flowed evenly from sea and sky and

meadow, within touch but not touching the serenely

smiling familiar beings about her, Miranda felt without

warning a vague tremor of apprehension, some small

flick of distrust in her joy; a thin frost touched the edges

of this confident tranquillity; something, somebody, was

missing, she had lost something, she had left something

trainable in another country, oh, what could it be?

There are no trees, no trees here, she said in fright, I

have left something unfinished. A thought struggled at

the back of her mind, came clearly as a voice in her

ear. Where are the dead? We have forgotten the dead,

oh, the dead, where are they? At once as if a curtain

had fallen, the bright landscape faded, she was alone in a

strange stony place of bitter cold, picking her way along

a steep path of slippery snow, calling out. Oh, 1 must

go back! But in what direction? Pain returned, a ter-

rible compelling pain running through her veins like

heavy fire, the stench of corruption filled her nostrils,

the sweetish sickening smell of rotting flesh and pus;

she opened her eyes and saw pale light through a coarse

white cloth over her face, knew that the smell of death

was in her own body, and struggled to lift her hand.

The cloth was drawn away; she saw Miss Tanner filling

a hypodermic needle in her methodical expert way, and

heard Dr. Hildesheim saying, “I think that will do the

trick. Try another.” Aliss Tanner plucked firmly at

Miranda’s arm near the shoulder, and the unbelievable

current of agony ran burning through her veins again.

She struggled to cry out, saying. Let me go, let me go;

but heard only incoherent sounds of animal suffering.

She saw doctor and nurse glance at each other with the

glance of initiates at a mystery, nodding in silence, their

eyes alive with knowledgeable pride. They looked

briefly at their handiwork and hurried away.

Bells screamed all off key, wrangling together as they

collided in mid air, horns and whistles mingled shrilly

with cries of human distress; sulphur colored light ex-

ploded through the black window pane and flashed away

in darkness. Miranda waking from a dreamless sleep

asked without expecting an answer, “What is happen-

ing?” for there was a bustle of voices and footsteps in

the corridor, and a sharpness in the air; the far clamor

went on, a furious exasperated shrieking like a mob in

revolt.

The light came on, and Miss Tanner said in a furry

voice, “Hear that? They’re celebrating. It’s the Armi-

stice. The war is over, my dear.” Her hands trembled.

She rattled a spoon in a cup, stopped to listen, held the

cup out to Miranda. From the ward for old bedridden

women down the hall floated a ragged chorus of cracked

voices singing, “My country, ’tis of thee . . .”

Sweet land . . . oh, terrible land of this bitter world

where the sound of rejoicing was a clamor of pain,

where ragged tuneless old women, sitting up waiting for

their evening bowl of cocoa, were singing, “Sweet land

of Liberty—”

“Oh, say, can you see?” their hopeless voices were

asking next, the hammer strokes of metal tongues

drowning them out. “The war is over,” said Miss Tan-

ner, her underlip held firmly, her eyes blurred. Miranda

said, “Please open the window, please, I smell death in

here.”

Now if real daylight such as I remember having seen

in this world would only come again, but it is always

twilight or just before morning, a promise of day that

is never kept. What has become of the sun? That was

the longest and loneliest night and yet it will not end

and let the day come. Shall I ever see light again?

Sitting in a long chair, near a window, it was in itself

a melancholy wonder to see the colorless sunlight slant*

ing on the snow, under a sky drained of its blue. “Can

this be my face?” Miranda asked her mirror. “Are these

my own hands?” she asked Miss Tanner, holding them

up to show the yellow tint like melted wax glimmering

between the closed fingers. The body is a curious mon-

ster, no place to live in, how could anyone feel at home

there? Is it possible I can ever accustom myself to this

place? she asked herself. The human faces around her

seemed dulled and tired, with no radiance of skin and

eyes as Miranda remembered radiance; the once white

walls of her room were now a soiled gray. Breathing

slowly, falling asleep and waking again, feeling the

splash of water on her flesh, taking food, talking in bare

phrases with Dr. Hildeshcim and Miss Tanner, Miranda

looked about her with the covertly hostile eyes of an

alien who docs not like the country in which he finds

himself, does not understand the language nor wish to

learn it, does not mean to live there and yet is helpless,

unable to leave it at his will.

“It is morning,” Miss Tanner would say, with a sigh,

for she had grown old and weary once for all in the

past month, “morning again, my dear,” showing Mi-

randa the same monotonous landscape of dulled ever-

greens and leaden snow. She would rustle about in her

starched skirts, her face bravely powdered, her spirit un-

breakable as good steel, saying, “Look, my dear, what

a heavenly morning, like a crystal,” for she had an affec-

tion for the salvaged creature before her, the silent un-

grateful human being whom she, Cornelia Tanner, a

nurse who knew her business, had snatched back from

death with her own hands. “Nursing is nine-tenths, just

the same,” Miss Tanner would tell the other nurses;

“keep that in mind.” Even the sunshine was Miss Tan-

ner’s own prescription for the further recovery of Mi-

randa, this patient the doctors had given up for lost, and

who yet sat here, visible proof of Miss Tanner’s theory.

She said, “Look at the sunshine, now,” as she might be

saying, “I ordered this for you, my dear, do sit up and

take it.”

“It’s beautiful,” Miranda would answer, even turning

her head to look, thanking Miss Tanner for her good-

ness, most of all her goodness about the weather, “beau-

tiful, I always loved it.” And I might love it again if I

saw it, she thought, but truth was, she could not see it.

There was no light, there might never be light again,

compared as it niust always be with the light she had

seen beside the blue sea that lay so tranquilly along the

shore of her paradise. That was a child’s dream of the

heavenly meadow, the vision of repose that comes to a

tired body in sleep, she thought, but I have seen it when

I did not know it was a dream. Closing her eyes she

would rest for a moment remembering that bliss which

had repaid all the pain of the journey to reach it; open-

ing them again she saw with a new anguish the dull

world to which she was condemned, where the light

seemed filmed over with cobwebs, all the bright sur-

faces corroded, the sharp planes melted and formless,

all objects and beings meaningless, ah, dead and with-

ered things that believed themselves alive!

At night, after the long effort of lying in her chair,

in her extremity of grief for what she had so briefly

won, she folded her painful body together and wept

silently, shamelessly, in pity for herself and her lost rap-

ture. There was no escape. Dr. Hildesheim, Miss Tan-

ner, the nurses in the diet kitchen, the chemist, the sur-

geon, the precise machine of the hospital, the whole

humane conviction and custom of society, conspired to

pull her inseparable rack of bones and wasted flesh to

its feet, to put in order her disordered mind, and to set

her once more safely in the road that would lead her

again to death.

Chuck Rouncivale and Mary Townsend came to see

her, bringing her a bundle of letters they had guarded

for her. They brought a basket of delicate small hot-

house flowers, lilies of the valley with sweet peas and

feathery fern, and above these blooms their faces were

merry and haggard.

Mary said, “You have had a tussle, haven’t you?”

and Chuck said, “Well, you made it back, didn’t you?”

Then after an uneasy pause, they told her that every-

body was waiting to see her again at her desk. “They’ve

put me back on sports already, Miranda,” said Chuck.

For ten minutes Miranda smiled and told them how

gay and what a pleasant surprise it was to find herself

alive. For it will not do to betray the conspiracy and

tamper with the courage of the living; there is nothing

better than to be alive, everyone has agreed on that; it

is past argument, and who attempts to deny it is justly

outlawed. “I’ll be back in no time at all,” she said; “this

is almost over.”

Her letters lay in a heap in her lap and beside her

chair. Now and then she turned one over to read the

inscription, recognized this handwriting or that, exam-

ined the blotted stamps and the postmarks, and let them

drop again. For two or three days they lay upon the

table beside her, and she continued to shrink from them.

“They will all be telling me again how good it is to be

alive, they will say again they love me, they are glad

I am living too, and what can I answer to that?” and

her hardened, indifferent heart shuddered in despair at

itself, because before it had been tender and capable of

love.

Dr. Hildesheim said, “What, all these letters not

opened yet?” and Miss Tanner said, “Read your letters,

my dear. I’ll open them for you.” Standing beside the

bed, she slit them cleanly with a paper knife. Miranda,

cornered, picked and chose until she found a thin one

in an unfamiliar handwriting. “Oh, no, now,” said Miss

Tanner, “take them as they come. Here, I’ll hand them

to you.” Site sat down, prepared to be helpful to the

end.

What a victory, what triumph, what happiness to be

alive, sang the letters in a chorus. The names were signed

with flourishes like the circles in air of bugle notes, and

they were the names of those she had loved best; some

of those she had known well and pleasantly; and a few

who meant nothing to her, then or now. The thin letter

in the unfamiliar handwriting was from a strange man

at the camp where Adam had been, telling her that

Adam had died of influenza in the camp hospital. Adam

had asked him, in case anything happened, to be sure

to let her know.

If anything happened. To be sure to let her know. If

anything happened. “Your friend, Adam Barclay,”

wrote the strange man. It had happened— she looked at

the date— more than a month ago.

“I’ve been here a long time, haven’t I?” she asked

Miss Tanner, who was folding letters and putting them

back in their proper envelopes.

“Oh, quite a while,” said Miss Tanner, “but you’ll

be ready to go soon now. But you must be careful of

yourself and not overdo, and you should come back

how and then and let us look at you, because sometimes

the aftereffects are very—”

Miranda, sitting up before the mirror, wrote care-

fully; “One lipstick, medium, one ounce flask Bois

d’Hiver perfume, one pair of gray suede gauntlets with-

out straps, two pairs gray sheer stockings without

clocks—”

Towney, reading after her, said, “Everything without

something so that it will be almost impossible to get?”

“Try it, though,” said Miranda, “they’re nicer with-

out. One walking stick of silvery wood with a silver

knob.”

“That’s going to be expensive,” warned Towney.

“Walking is hardly worth it.”

“You’re right,” said Miranda, and wrote in the mar-

gin, “a nice one to match my other things. Ask Chuck

to look for this, Mary. Good looking and not too

heavy.” Lazarus, come forth. Not unless you bring me

my top hat and stick. Stay where you are then, you

snob. Not at all. I’m coming forth. “A jar of cold

cream,” wrote Miranda, “a box of apricot powder— and,

Mary, I don’t need eye shadow, do I?” She glanced at

her face in the mirror and away again. “Still, no one

need pity this corpse if we look properly to the art of

the thing.”

Mary Townsend said, “You won’t recognize your-

self in a week.”

“Do you suppose, Mary,” asked Miranda, “I could

have my old room back again?”

“That should be easy,” said Mary. “We stored away

all your things there with Miss Hobbe.” Miranda won-

dered again at the time and trouble the living took to be

helpful to the dead. But not quite dead now% she reas-

sured herself, one foot in either world now; soon I shall

cross back and be at home again. The light will seem

real and I shall be glad when I hear that someone I know

has escaped from death. I shall visit the escaped ones and

help them dress and tell them how lucky they are, and

how lucky I am still to have them. Mary will be back

soon with my gloves and my walking stick, I must go

now, I must begin saying good-by to Miss Tanner and

Dr. Hildesheim. Adam, she said, now you need not die

again, but still I wish you were here; I wish you had

come back, what do you think I came back for, Adam,

to be deceived like this?

At once he was there beside her, invisible but urgently

present, a ghost but more alive than she was, the last

intolerable cheat of her heart; for knowing it was false

she still clung to the lie, the unpardonable lie of her

bitter desire. She said, “I love you,” and stood up trem-

bling, trying by the mere act of her will to bring him

to sight before her. If I could call you up from the

grave I would, she said, if I could see your ghost I would

say, I believe … “I believe,” she said aloud. “Oh, let

me see you once more.” The room was silent, empty,

the shade was gone from it, struck away by the sudden

violence of her rising and speaking aloud. She came to

herself as if out of sleep. Oh, no, that is not the way, I

must never do that, she warned herself. Miss Tanner

said, “Your taxicab is waiting, my dear,” and there was

Mary. Ready to go.

No more war, no more plague, only the dazed silence

that follows the ceasing of the heavy guns; noiseless

houses with the shades drawn, empty streets, the dead

cold light of tomorrow. Now there would be time for

everything.

2