Argosy, Vol. 112, No. 2 — page 15: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CROSSES OF STEEL. then took the letters to their bosses for signing. Imagine your thirsty citizen again. He walks six blocks for a bottle of olives or cherries, as the c case may be. He takes his stand before his sideboard. He pours the liquor from the harmless bottle to a cut- glass decanter, carefully dusted off and washed. He searches the back parts of a closet for flat-bowl little goblet. He even sets a hassock at the approximate level of the iron or brass foot-rail. Slowly he tilts the bottle over the glass, slowly pours. Very deliberately he spears the olive or the cherry. Delicately he sinks or floats it in the pale-yellow fluid. Is not anything as worth doing as this worth doing right? To be sure, the genial friends are absent—the smiling barkeep with his busy towel, the ringing register, the clicking ticker, the vast array of near-cut glass, the loud-voice story-teller and louder-voice songster down the line with a slight over- load apiece, the belligerent argument be- tween the two _ heavier-load contestants at the far end of the bar. To be sure, the meager drinks will prove but an aggrava- tion. But—it is worth while, at that. After the day’s work was ended and the morrow’s work planned, after the coarse dinner with the superintendent and foremen was sufficiently digested to have its coarse- ness forgotten, Duncan Grout removed his soiled khaki and assumed a soft smoking- jacket. He flung aside the black cigar of his liking and got a box of tasteless ciga- _ rettes from the bottom drawer of the bat- ~ tered desk. — He set up a folding easy chair. To one side of it he drew a fine phonograph, the only real bit of furniture in the shack. From its cabinet he selected three records. Mrs. Chixon was a semiprofessional singer. Two of the songs on the records she sang frequently for her husband and his guests. The third, Grout had once heard another woman sing. It was “ The Rosary.” To the other side of the chair he set a pine table. On this he placed his desk-light, after unscrewing its bulb and replacing that with one of pale-yellow opalescence. Under it he placed the box of cigarettes, a match-stand, a package of soft phonograph needles, and two photographs. Both of these were amateurs’ snap-shots. One was a flash-light view of the Chixon family in the Chixon library den; the other showed the face of the girl who had sung ‘““' The Rosary.” Sitting back in the easy chair, with the soft light on the page, held up to shut out the rough interior of the shack, with the phonograph softly discoursing the two songs, with an.occasional glance at the flash-light picture—one might approach an imagination of the scene in which that precious letter had been written. After it was finished, after it had given up its last attainable drop of thé charmed atmosphere of Chixon’s home, Duncan Grout would drink another draft of synthe- sized happiness. He would set the picture of the girl up under the light and play ‘The Rosary.”’ Perhaps by then his imag- ination would be keyed to picture his own home. But it would be harder. His own home did not exist, had never existed, never would exist. Time had been when the picture had seemed more than a hollow dream, when it had existed as a living hope, when he had built it into bridges, when he had tried to build it into life. But that time was become a series of poignant memories to which he might well prefer the purely im- aginary vision. No—Norma Ballard had not trifled with him, had not been false to him, had not deceived him in the least. deceived himself. He had been a fool to propose to her as he had done, when he had done it—or ever in any way. It had been in his twenty-fifth year that he had met her. She lived in Montclair. Her father conducted a branch office of a stock brokerage concern. He had been building his first bridge ‘on his own.” It was to gain the money for his last hard-earned year in the school of engineering. The bridge had been wretchedly designed by some politician-architect. When it came to building it, Grouch found that he must encroach upon land the property of Ellwood Ballard. That had taken him to Ballard’s house. (EOPAIELOOC) . @— 2-5 Foe s 7 - ZF He had but.