The unregenerate

NANCY HALE

Tasia went to the door herself to let him in. I am his hand-maiden, she thought to wait upon his greatness and his dignity. She called to the maid not to bother, and went to the door herself feeling so strangely, oh, I am less than the dust beneath his chariot wheels.

He walked in, slow and sure and himself, pleasant hut not even noticing her dress or her hair or her face, when she had taken an hour to dress. Tall and big and quiet, a man, with a man's preoccupations.

I am only a woman, she thought, don't pay any attention to me. Never again to hear "divine" or "mysterious" or "powerful. that s what I want. I am only a woman, foolish, unintelligent, your woman that runs to do what, you tell her to, and I am through with power.

She sat down on her soft deep sofa, looking at him smiling. But he only sat in an impersonal chair, big and dignified, and lit a cigar.

"Do you always smoke cigars?" she asked.

"Yes, he said. (Not Yes do you mind? or Does the; smell bother you but just Yes.) "Cigarettes are very unsatisfying."

"I think so too," she said. "I've stopped smoking them." For you, great Jove.

"I've been thinking," she said, "that I ought to get fatter. What do you think?"

"Yes, I think so. he said. "You're rather scrawny, aren't you? You ought to he fuller, 'l our arms and legs should he bigger. I like a big woman," be said, and drank.

"I want to be a big woman," she said. "I d like to he on the heavy side. I'd like to be quite fat. Her heart was beating furiously and she took long breaths and sat straight instead of slouching.

"I'll take you to dinner now." he said.

As she put on her coat she had a thought. She wanted him to take her to that old speakeasy where she had practically lived. She would see all the old hysterical friends there. They would shriek-and scream and cry, "Oh, it s Tasia, doesn't she look divine?" But she would be very calm and only look at John Hamilton and only speak when he spoke to her. Then she would be able to see and to know for sure how she was regenerated. She was above them and beyond them. Sin1 was a woman and they were children.

It was a bedlam, a crazy, nervous Babylon, and people were being very bright and clever and she knew them all. But she walked in with him. holding her chest out and looking up at him while he didn't look at her at all. They sat down at a table and he said it was a very noisy place and she agreed apologetically. Me, being apologetic. She refused to look at her friends.

She didn't interrupt. She agreed with him. She put her whole mind on what he was saying. At dessert a note was brought to her, and she asked his permission to open it, and he nodded.

"Darling we think your middle-aged beau is too too cute. Come over for a moment and tell us where in the world you ever found such a divine elephant."

She crumpled it up in her hand, and looked at the great, sober, dignified man's face opposite her. Oh. God, I am glad to be out of it. I am so happy to be conquered instead of conquering. All those fools, they will do whatever I tell them to.

"What was your note?" he asked.

"Some people I know slightly wanted me to come over. I'm not going," she promised, afraid of displeasing him.

"But you ought to go. You mustn't be rude," he said, looking at her, so much better than she.

"Yes. sir. she said, and felt again that queer, hot thrill of submission.

"Well!" they all cried as she sat down at their messy, littered table with them. "Darling have a drink. You must he exhausted with all that profundity."

"I'm not drinking," she said.

"Oy, hut he's pompous," Evelyn said, coughing a middle-aged cough and giving an imitation of John Hamilton.

"He's a great man," Tasia said.

"He looks kind of great," Archie commented, edging his chair nearer Tasia's. "As if he told stories after dinner and would call the bunch of us a 'group'. What are you going to do, ruin him?"

"I'm in love with him," she said, and they all hooted, and she thought, I should not have dragged this thing through such slime.

"He is the only person I've seen for years with any dignity," she said, hating them.

Peter spoke, gasping with laughter.

"Whoo-oo, he certainly had dignity the time the horse hit him in the breeches," he said and they all shrieked.

"What?"

"That's John Hamilton, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Why," Peter was weak with hysterical laughter and could hardly tell the story—"I went to a lecture once. God knows why but anyway, and he was the lecturer and very dull he was, too. But when I came out he was coming out too, and his hat blew off in front of the hall, and into the gutter, and he after it. and when he leaned over to pick it up out of the gutter a horse was there, a laundry horse, and this horse took a bite right where Mr. Hamilton didn't like it.

"I can't bear it," Evelyn gasped, tears running down the front of her face. "1 just cannot—bear it. It's—too—divine!

"I don't believe it," Tasia said.

"All right," Peter said, choking with laughter, "Don t then. But it happened. Don't let this remarkably dull character you've taken up with entirely ruin your sense of humor," and they all stopped laughing and stared at her suddenly.

She got up and went back to John Hamilton, and looking at him was to render that picture more colorful, more exact in her imagination.

"Would you mind if we went?" she asked gently hut not humbly any more.

In the cab she really tried. She really struggled, as you would struggle with surf, with her imagination. But that wild imagination, trained for years to see the ludicrous, went on making a vivid likeness of the ludicrous. Her imagination went on painting pictures of John Hamilton with all his dignity being bitten in the behind by a horse. It was so hysterically funny. She tried not to think how funny it was.

Of course it never happened. If he'd say to me, nonsense, fantastic, how could it have happened to Me, ME, John Hamilton, Jove, then perhaps I'd stop painting dirty pictures. He's got to tell me it's not true and then I can be at his feet again, and how I love that, to he at his feet! Suppose 1 should ask. John Hamilton, sir, were you ever bitten in the Dignity by a horse? Will you please save me from my imagination and my mind by telling me no horse ever hit you in the Dignity?

"Come upstairs," she said as a command when the cab stopped, and could have wept that she commanded him.

"Listen," she said as they sat. "You have got to tell me something."

"Why, certainly," he said, soberly.

"Listen, you never had a horse bite you —anywhere, did you? Listen, did you ever have a horse take a bite out of you one day after you had just given a lecture?"

"Why, no. Of course not. Never."

She stared at him for fully two minutes. No, it didn't. He never was bitten by a horse in the Dignity. Peter made it up. Peter would. Peter could. But—Jove was bitten in the Dignity by a horse! Jove was bitter—

Tasia shook her head as you would shake your head to drive away hornets. She put her hands on her slim sides and laughed and laughed.

For she could still see nothing hut John Hamilton being bitten by a horse as he picked up his hat.