Fifth Avenue. In that quiet hour before dawn when for a trifling
interval the city dozes, it never sleeps. The gleaming asphalt, blanched
to silvery whiteness by arc lights, stretched ahead inimitably between
looming sky-scrapers, phantoms of concrete and steel, brick and glass,
shadowy and unreal as the back drop in a pantomime. In the middle of its
polished surface, like a dark isle in a glistening ribbon of river,
rested a slipper. Black, satin, buckled with brilliants which caught the
light and threw it back transmuted into a thousand colorful sparks. A
slipper of parts, unquestionably.
Bruce Harcourt stopped short in his long stride to regard it
incredulously. How had it come there? He looked up and down the broad
deserted avenue before he salvaged it. A spot of red light was dimming
eastward.
Back on the sidewalk he turned the bit of satin over and over in his
hand. It was warm. The feel of it sent a curious glow through his veins.
It must quite recently have covered a slender foot. Dropped from the now
distant automobile? He remembered the gay party of men and girls who had
been leaving the hotel as he came out. Why hadn’t the owner stopped to
pick it up? The hundred eyes of the rhinestone buckle blinked at him
with a what’s-the-answer challenge in their shallow depths.
He thrust the disturbing bit of foot-gear into his top-coat pocket,
gravely regarded the glittering avenue before he entered the Club door.
Twenty-four hours more of this and he would be on his way to the
wilderness. In his room he set the slipper upon the dresser. From the
depths of an easy chair he contemplated it as he smoked his pipe. Too
late, too early in the day to go to bed. It seemed such a waste of time
to sleep in New York. Soon he would be seeing only forests, glaciers,
fields of snow, rails, steam-shovels and the paraphernalia of
engineering.
He was not sorry to go back. His college classmates who had given the
dinner for him tonight wouldn’t believe it, though. They had treated him
with the considerate attention due one about to be exiled. It was exile
in a way yet—how the dickens could that slipper have been dropped in
the middle of the Avenue? The girl who had lost it—its slenderness
proclaimed it a girl’s possession—would have known had she dropped it
from her foot. What was she like? Dark? Fair? Hard? Tender?
Tender! Harcourt shrugged and refilled his pipe. From his observation
they didn’t make them tender any more. He was thirty-five. Since his
sophomore days he hadn’t seen a girl who had touched his heart with
flame. An intangible presence had seemed to stand between him and love.
He was ashamed to acknowledge it even to himself, but it was there. A
psychoanalyst would doubtless diagnose it as the subconscious guarding
his profession, for he certainly couldn’t take a wife into the wilds of
Alaska railroad building. He had been given a corking chance to make a
name for himself in his profession of engineering, but it meant cutting
out romance. From what he had heard of the marital experiences of some
of the men who had dined him so royally, he wasn’t missing much.
He sat speculating about the slipper and its owner till dawn stole over
the roofs he could see from his window. Rainbow colors, violet, indigo,
lemon, melted into blue in the eastern sky. Outlines sharpened. The
mists of the city fled. The lights in the room paled to ineffectual
blurs. Creaking noises in the hall outside. Faint bells in the distance.
From the streets ten stories below rose the murmur of a waking city.
Morning and his last day in New York. He stretched his long, lean body.
His last day in New York and a full one. Before he left on the midnight
train he had to keep innumerable business appointments, confirm orders
for materials, and hire a secretary. His brows, a shade darker than his
hair, met over his clear gray eyes, the clean lines of his mouth
tightened. Why couldn’t Tubby Grant have found one for himself on the
coast?
Returned from his shower he regarded the slipper on the dresser. What
should he do with it? He turned it over in his hand. The eyes of the
buckle winked at him, brilliantly but colorlessly now that the lights
were out. It was a gem of a buckle. A buckle of value. He knew that,
because he had bought several pairs for his sister who had a buckle
complex. Would the owner advertise? He’d take a look at the evening
paper. Perhaps he would have a chance to return it before he left. The
interview might put a decided kick into his last evening. The slipper
suggested adventure. He had fought off all invitations. He hadn’t known
at what time he would finish the business of a full day.
The following eight hours proved more crowded and the search for a
secretary more futile than he had imagined. The mere mention of the word
Alaska set the prospects he interviewed into shivering refusal.
“Tubby’ll have to get one for himself on the coast,” he concluded as he
opened the door of his room at the Club. As he snapped on the light the
eyes of the buckle on the dresser flashed into prismatic glitter.
“Good Lord, I’d forgotten you!” he exclaimed aloud, in surprised
response to its almost human appeal. “Let’s see if we can find your
owner.”
He shook out the evening paper, located the Lost and Found column and
ran his finger down the list. “Here it is!” He read the advertisement
through twice.
LOST. Monday evening on Fifth Avenue, black satin slipper with
rhinestone buckle. Reward, if returned at once to J. Trent, 0001
Madison Avenue.
J. Trent. J. Trent. He had heard that combination before. He turned the
name over and over in his mind. Click! It slipped into place. Janice
Trent! Billy Trent’s sister “Jan.” He remembered her as a leggy child of
twelve when he had spent his last college vacation before the war at the
Trents’ country place. She had exasperated her brother and himself by
tagging after them on fishing expeditions. She had been particularly
annoying when sitting on the veranda steps personifying furious
rebellion as they shot off in the roadster to pay tribute to
neighborhood girls. Funny little thing, naturally timid, always forcing
herself to be brave. She had inspired a protective tenderness. His eyes
shadowed with regret. Darn shame that he and Billy, who had meant so
much to one another, had drifted apart. He had gone to Trent’s office at
once upon his arrival in New York, only to learn that he was out of
town.
He stared unseeingly at the advertisement. Last night at the dinner when
he had regretted Billy’s absence, Silsbee, the class gossip, had
confided:
“Trent’s a little gob of gloom these days. Can’t blame him. His father
played the market, lost practically everything he had and passed out.
His sister Janice is to be married in a week. Marrying a multi who’s got
a way with the ladies. The two are at a prenuptial blow-out in this very
hotel now. Confidentially, Billy heard that Paxton—that’s the
prospective bridegroom’s name—had been making whoopee in an adjacent
city and he has gone to investigate. Gosh, how do these sheiks get away
with it!”
Harcourt looked at his watch. He would change for the trip—no, he
wouldn’t, he would dress for dinner; no knowing what adventure might be
lurking round the next corner. Doubtless, there were a dozen J. Trents
in the city, but if the owner of the slipper proved to be Janice he
would persuade her to play round with him until his train left. Silsbee
had said last night that she was being entertained in the same hotel; he
had seen a gay party leaving only a few moments before he picked up the
slipper. Those parts of the puzzle fitted perfectly.
An hour later, in answer to his ring, a trim maid admitted him to the
Madison Avenue house, a slice of old-time aristocracy sandwiched between
new-time shops. He gave his errand, not his name. As he waited in the
cheerless reception room, where pictures leaned dejectedly against the
walls, where chairs were shrouded in ghostly covers, and furniture was
crated, he heard the murmur of voices in a room beyond, the imperative
ring of a telephone. Someone answered, Harcourt looked at his watch
impatiently. Would J. Trent keep him waiting while she gossiped? He
couldn’t help hearing the frost-tinged voice.
“No. . . . It was unpardonable. . . . I shall not see you. . . . Don’t
come. . . . I have said my last word. . . . You should have thought of
that before Good-bye.”
The receiver clicked on the hook. Could that have been a prospective
bride speaking, Harcourt wondered. Her voice had given him the creeps.
Of course there could be two J. Trents in the City of New York, but—
“You have my slipper?”
He curiously regarded the girl on the threshold. Little Janice Trent
grown up. The same boyish croak in her voice that he remembered. Who
would have thought that the angular child would develop into beauty? Her
glinting brown hair waved softly close to her boyish head. The ardent
curves of her lips showed vividly red against her pallor. He was vaguely
conscious of a beige frock, the yellow of topaz at her throat.
“If this is yours.”
The long, gold-tipped lashes flew up. Her eyes were the color of bronze
pansies, slightly beaten by the rain of recent tears, he surmised.
Incredulity, amazement certainty followed one another in her voice.
“Why! Why, you are Bruce Harcourt!”
Impulsively she extended her hands. The satin slipper dropped to the
floor as he caught them.
“Then you haven’t forgotten me?”
“Forgotten you! How could I? Remember how I tagged you and Billy and how
furious you boys were when I appeared—how I sulked when you drove off
to the Country Club? I was ready to scratch out the eyes of any girl you
looked at. However, no matter how obdurate my brother remained, you
always relented, and said, ‘What’s the difference? Let her come along,
Billy!’ Remember how I clutched your hand when we went through the
woods? ‘Might see a bear!’ was my bugaboo. I shed cloud-bursts of tears
when you returned to college. And to think that it should be you who
picked up my slipper. Where did you find it?”
She was eager, radiant. Her fingers seemed to cling to his. His hold
tightened.
“Winking and blinking in the middle of Fifth Avenue before dawn this
morning. I have been consumed with curiosity to know how it came there.”
A flame of color tinged her face. She freed her hands.
“I started to get out of a roadster. I had opened the door, put one foot
out to jump when—”
“Reckless child! Go on, when?”
“When I—I changed my mind.” He had the sense as of a door closing
between them. “It’s wonderful to see you. I had been told that you were
in Alaska.”
“Have been for years. I’m starting back tonight.”
“Tonight! What a shame that Billy is away. You will stay and dine with
me, won’t you? This house is a mess. We’ve sold it and are clearing it,
but we still have a cook.”
“I have a better suggestion. Dine with me—unless—I was told last night
that you were about to be married. Perhaps you are not free.”
“I am free to do as I like.” The color which the surprise at his
identity had brought to her face faded. “I’d love to go, only let it be
some quiet place where we can talk.”
“Anywhere you say. You know your New York better than I.”
She had selected an hotel up town where the decorations, the music, the
perfection of the service sank into one’s consciousness as softly as the
foot into the thick pile of the velvet carpet.
Was this really little Jan Trent facing him across a small, seductively
lighted table in the shadow of a spreading palm? She had changed to an
evening frock, something lacy and brown, shot through and through with
gold. Long, old-fashioned garnet earrings winked countless ruby eyes as
they caught the light, six inches or more of the same blinking stones
girdled one bare arm. A richly furred, gleaming wrap was over the back
of her chair. Harcourt tried to picture the radiant, fragrant beauty of
her opposite him at one of the rough tables in the crude log cabin,
called the Waffle Shop, at the outfit’s headquarters in Alaska. The
vision wouldn’t materialize.
They talked of her family, the loss of her mother and father, of Billy,
of the enormous growth of the city, of the changes in it, in the fashion
of plays, of books, of clothes since he was last in New York.
As the gray-haired waiter set the coffee on the table and withdrew to a
discreet distance, Harcourt suggested:
“We still have time for part of a show. I don’t leave until midnight.”
“I would rather sit here and talk.”
“Suits me. Will you smoke?”
She shook her head. Elbow on the table, dimpled chin in one hand, she
drew hieroglyphics on the cloth with a rosy-nailed finger.
“No. My fiancé so admires the accomplishment in his friends that I
wonder he chose a girl so pre-war in her tastes and habits as I.”
“And you have promised to marry a man of whom you can speak so
contemptuously?”
In the room beyond a violin swept into the music of Scharwenka’s Polish
Dance, with a swing and fire which set Bruce Harcourt’s pulses thrumming
to its tempo. She folded her hands—ringless, he noted in
surprise—lightly on the table, as she answered his question with
another.
“Ever met Ned Paxton?”
“No.”
“Then you wouldn’t understand. He has attracted me unbelievably, while
something deep within me protested, ‘You know that you don’t trust him.’
Moth and candle stuff, I suppose. He has hurt my heart and my pride, yet
when he smiled and explained, I would dope my intelligence—instinct,
rather—forgive him and remember his good qualities. He has them. Old
people adore him, children like him—but he doesn’t get on with dogs.
Why am I telling you all this, I wonder?”
He answered the troubled sweetness of her eyes, her mouth, so proud, so
unhappy, more than her words.
“Because you’ve reached the point where you’ve got to talk. You used to
tell me everything when we went fishing together. Remember?”
“I remember what a pest I was. All that was needed to make me stick like
a leech was to have you say:
“‘You can’t do it. It’s too hard for a girl.’ That settled it. I would
put it through or perish in the attempt. I was conscious of my fear
complex, though I didn’t know enough to call it that. It wasn’t fear
really, it was imagination plus, which made a specialty of screening
disaster. I’ve fought it all my life but it still gets me for an instant
at times. Let’s not talk any more about Jan Trent, I’m fed up with her
and her problems. How did you happen to go to Alaska—to me it seems the
jumping-off place of the universe—you, who Billy claimed were a
blown-in-the-glass New Englander?”
“That blown-in-the-glass-New England stuff was the answer. I was too
darn conservative. I realized that when I came from overseas. Any
nurseryman will tell you that young trees grow more sturdy by being
transplanted. It was a wrench to tear away from old ties and old
customs, but I’ve never been sorry. The break made me world-minded.”
“Does that mean that you’re completely depuritanized?”
He laughed. “Not wholly—myself—but I have a greater sympathy for the
other fellow’s point of view.”
“Tell me about Alaska. It sounds so bracing and crisp and clean.”
Harcourt lighted another cigarette. “I wish that it always conveyed that
impression. I’ve fought and died trying to get a secretary for our
outfit. I’ll bet I’ve interviewed fifty of them, short and tall, lean
and fat. The mere name of the country sets an applicant’s teeth to
chattering.”
“I should think there’d be dozens of girls crazy to go.”
“Girls! What would we do with a girl in our outfit? We go hundreds of
miles into the interior. Ours is no coast cinch. I’m after a man.”
“You should have seen the fighting line of your mouth when you echoed
‘Girls!’”
He put his hand to his face as though to relax the muscles. “One
acquires a fighting line to one’s mouth when bridge-building in Alaska.”
“Are there no women there?”
“Of course, wonderful women in the cities, cultured, chic, keenly
conversant with world conditions; others on remote farms, nuggets of
gold, if rough ones; but not in our business. That is not quite true.
There are three: Millicent Hale, wife of the chief engineer of the
department to which I’m attached, and the Samp sisters.”
“Samp! What a curious name. What do they do?”
Her eyes were alight with interest, color had come back to her face.
Harcourt was subconsciously aware of an orchestral accompaniment;
languorous rhythm, jewels of sound, no measure really begun, no measure
really finished for him, just murmurous harmony with a hint of passion
running through it all which set an eager pain tugging at his heart, a
poignant yearning stirring in his soul.
“Two years ago Mary and Martha Samp appeared at our headquarters on the
coast at the mouth of an inlet, and established a Waffle Shop.”
“Can they cook?”
“Cook! I’ll say they can. The men crowd the shop every night. They would
do anything for those two women, who look as though they might have
stepped out of the comics of a colored supplement. Martha, the elder, is
lean and gaunt, with a tight little top-knot of rusty hair, speaks her
mind no matter how welcome or unwelcome her conclusions may be. Mary is
round and plump, with big, innocent blue eyes which seem to be eternally
interrogating life and being eternally surprised at the answer. They
brought an enormous black cat, Blot—he does look like spilled ink when
lying on the rug. The Eskimos and Indians who work for us regarded him
with the amazement they might have bestowed upon an elephant, don’t
quite like him. The sisters brought also a melodeon on which Mary
wheezes out hymns on Sunday evenings while the men sway, rumble, quaver
and soar to its accompaniment.”
“And the chief’s wife—Millicent, you called her?”
“She has a double interest in headquarters. Her brother, Jimmy Chester,
is third engineer. He is devoted to her. She is a pretty but pathetic
little woman. She has—”
“You needn’t describe her. Calling her ‘little woman’ was as
enlightening as sticking up a danger sign on thin ice. I recognize the
type. Your description sounds delightfully homey. Not at all like what I
thought life in Alaska would be.”
“Life—human life in Alaska—is no different from life in other places.
People are born, die, marry and divorce, love and hate; the last two a
little harder perhaps than when nearer civilization. There are as many
people there to the hundred with ideas and ideals as anywhere else. Of
course one comes up against raw brutalities and derelicts, but one comes
up against them here—in spots.”
“Tell me more. Tell me about the country, your work, everything.” She
was like an eager child begging for another story. “It will keep my mind
off my problems.”
Her problems! Paxton, of course. Harcourt’s heart contracted as though a
ruthless hand had squeezed it. The years which had intervened since he
had seen her were as a day. Impulsively he spoke to the little girl he
had known.
“Be a sport. Acknowledge that you’ve made a mistake. Don’t go on with
this marriage, Jan.”
Her eyes were intent on a slim finger tracing the pattern in the damask
cloth. “Are you suggesting that I back out at the eleventh hour? Think
of the stacks of presents! Think of the publicity! Forget me. Tell me
about Alaska.”
With the sensation as of knuckles smartly rapped, conscious of deepening
color, Harcourt acknowledged, “My mistake! Alaska is a big subject. It
is our last American frontier. For the first time since its acquisition
by the United States, there is a program in sight for utilizing great
stretches of wilderness. I would advise any youngster in quest of a
career to hop on the Alaskan band-wagon. Where shall I begin?”
In the next room a man’s caressing voice sang:
“‘Once in a lifetime
Someone comes along
Bringing happiness for two.’”
A foolish little song, yet with a sweetness, a lilt, a minor undertone
which gave Harcourt’s heart a twist.
“Begin anywhere. Can you get into the northern country at this time of
year? Will you go by boat or dog-sleds?”
“By plane. You people in the States don’t realize that the development
of airways in Alaska is one of the romances of aviation.”
“Then you are an aviator as well as an engineer?”
“Rather more engineer than aviator at present. I combined the two
professions overseas. Tonight I go to confer with the Crowned Heads of
our department. I’m due back at camp before the spring break-up.”
“What is that? You see, my curiosity is insatiable. It isn’t all
curiosity,” she admitted, in a voice half eager, half mysterious.
What had she meant by that? “I referred to the breaking up of the winter
ice. We’ve been building a bridge. It spans a river which flows between
living glaciers. We’ve been at work on it two years, two years of the
stiffest fighting I’ve ever known. Great concrete piers, reinforced with
steel, begun through the winter ice, were anchored forty or fifty feet
to the bottom.”
“It makes my teeth chatter. It sounds horribly cold!”
“Cold! I’ll say it was cold. Snow storms were continuous. The piercing
wind which blew from sixty to seventy miles an hour was laden with fine
particles of snow which stung and cut like sleet. This spring will test
the bridge. When the ice breaks thousands of bergs will come crashing
down the defile propelled by the twelve-mile current of the river. We’ve
been setting ice-breakers this winter.”
“How the men must have suffered! Yet you are going back.”
“It isn’t always like that in winter. There are wonderful nights with
their silences and the Northern Lights. There will be days and
days—short ones—when the sun comes shining through, when clouds cast
purple shadows on snow-capped mountains, when the Stars and Stripes
flutter against a clear sky. Most of the engineers are ex-army men, so
we raise the flag by Reveille, lower it with the bugle call for Retreat.
It reminds us that, frontiersmen as we are, we’re still citizens of the
good old U. S. A., that we can reflect credit or discredit on our
government.”
“I love the Colors. Go on!”
“There are days when the banks of streams are vague and misty with young
green and you can smell spring in the air. The summers are glorious.
Sunshiny days. Birds singing. Long twilights. Ferns and brilliant
flowers, fruits and vegetables, double the size of those grown here. An
aquamarine sea ruffled into white frills by a soft wind. Over all, a sky
like a gigantic turquoise rimmed with dazzling snowy peaks.”
“What gorgeousness! What a feast of color! Are you a poet?”
He laughed. “Not guilty. One gets the habit of thinking things through
in the immensity of the far North, that’s all.”
“Do you live in a tent when—when on location?”
“By ‘on location’ do you mean when I’m at headquarters? A tent! I’m a
house-owner. Three years ago a young architect joined the outfit as a
draftsman. Someone had fooled him into thinking that the experience in
the frozen North would lengthen his life. He came with an outfit
suitable for winter sports and a pair of pearl-handled revolvers. The
men guyed him unmercifully at first, then they got fond of him. To keep
him cheerful and occupied I suggested that he draw plans for a log house
for me, he was not physically fit for anything else. He got so
interested in the thing that before I knew it I was sold to the idea of
building it. The thought of having a roof-tree to return to from the
wilderness gripped me.”
“What is it like? I’m all excited.”
“He called it an H house. It is built of logs chinked with moss. There
is a long room in the middle with the length of the rooms at either end
going the other way.” With a pencil he drew the letter on a card. “Like
that. Stone chimneys at each end of the living-room provide fireplaces
for the other two rooms. We use those in summer; in winter good old
Yukon stoves are the only things which will keep us warm. Having gone so
far in our plans, we lost our heads, went cuckoo and added a model
kitchenette and a bath for each bedroom. Sent for oodles of price-lists
and catalogues of fittings. The boy architect and I had the time of our
lives selecting them. I spent money like a drunken sailor.”
“Where do you get water?”
“This is an engineers’ camp, remember. We piped from a stream which is
fed from glaciers. As we make our own electricity, warming it after it
reaches the house is a cinch. But—oh, yes, there is a but—while it is
grand in summer, in winter when the ground is frozen feet deep, the
tanks are filled by hand. Not so good.”
“Did the boy architect get well?”
“No. ’Twas a tough break for him. He was the nephew of the Samp sisters.
That fact accounts for their landing in our particular camp. They came
up to take care of him, he was all they had. After he went they stayed
to look after the rest of us.”
“Your H house sounds marvelous.”
“I wouldn’t have believed it could mean so much to me. When I mush into
headquarters behind my dog-team, I can see, perhaps through falling
snow, smoke curling upward from the chimney. The glow from lighted
windows sets the icicles which fringe the eaves agleam. Snow piled
almost to the roof sparkles like an old-fashioned Christmas card.
Although I know that only my husky, Tong, and my house-boy, Pasca, are
waiting for me, a sense of home-coming warms me to the marrow.”
“That is your winter. Mine is so different. Curious that out of all the
world you should have been the one to pick up my slipper. If the
incident were used in a story it would be called improbable.”
“No such word as improbable now, the war put it out of business. Events
which twenty years ago would have seemed unbelievable are all in the
day’s work. It’s not so curious that I should have retrieved the slipper
when you consider that we had been dining at the same hotel, that we
left at about the same time.”
“It seems like—like—do you believe in Fate?”
He considered before he answered. “I believe there is a force in the
universe of which, as yet, we know nothing. For want of a better term we
call it, sometimes Fate, sometimes the supernatural.”
Into the silence which followed boomed the voice of a tower clock. She
rose quickly.
“I’ve kept you here talking and talking. If you don’t hurry you will
miss your train—I wish—I wish I dared make you miss it.”
He caught the glint of tears in her eyes as he laid the costly wrap
across her shoulders. A tide of passionate desire to pick her up in his
arms and run away with her possessed him. His jaw tightened. Janice
Trent in an engineer’s cabin in the wilderness? A blind alley. He would
better back out.
Only the most casual remarks passed between them as the taxi slithered
and serpentined its way through brilliantly lighted streets. At her door
he said unsteadily:
“You’ve given me a wonderful memory to carry back to Alaska.”
Her face was a pale blur in the dusk of the vestibule as she laid her
hand in his. The quick, almost frightened clutch of her fingers touched
his blood with flame.
“Don’t marry him, Jan. Don’t—”
She twisted one hand free to press it against his lips. “Don’t say it.
Then you’ll never be sorry. Good-night.”
He kissed the slim fingers fervently. “Good-bye,” he whispered huskily,
before he bolted down the steps.
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