George Kibbe Turner

“ And if the customer with the careless money is young and full of youth's desires, so much the faster will that money fly.
John Schmaar knew this little waster as he had known scores of others like her. A much-spoiled child, slightly trained, both father and mother dead, she was loose to wander down the most alluring paths of woman's life—unguarded and at her own sweet will. Like most of her kind, she had no acquaintances of consequence in New York, for her father had come to the city in his middle age. Her only social life was in the theaters and restaurants. ”

“ Why are we women so much braver than the men? That's what I'm waiting to hear about.”
“Because it's nature that they should,” the Westerner replied finally. Because a woman isn't so strong physically, in the first place, not so strong as her—as her love. So she has to go farther, she has to take more chances—any chance! And she will. A woman, when she really cares, is the bravest thing in the world. A good woman, I mean, when she really—cares,” he said, stumbling along again to another sudden stop, but still looking back again into Aileen Dulcifer's eyes. ”

“ The Bannerman girl laughed, and the rest smiled. The two men out on Lovers' Leap—the burly John Schmaar and the big, light, curly-headed Westerner, still stood there.
“COME away! You must!” cried Aileen Dulcifer. And all at once she ran out to the edge of the Leap and pulled them both back with her! There was a surprise for Schmaar—the first real hint he had of what had happened to her.
“You're different from Papoosa, the Indian maid, or whatever her name was,” the Bannerman girl went blundering on. “You won't take a chance for any man.” ”

“ John Schmaar asked her, taking out his check-book. “You can pay me when you're married to him,” he assured her, laughing,
She couldn't do that—she couldn't sell herself. She couldn't marry him—even if there were any possibility of truth in what he said—which there wasn't.
“You wont have to sell yourself, maybe,” he said, looking up—and perceiving her eyes fastened hungrily on the check-book.
Why—what did he mean, she wanted to know again. But her eyes were less frightened now, A dimple was back playing in the smooth cheek.
“He's rich,” he told her. ”

“ That's the easiest thing lovers did in the old days—leaping. They were busy all over every moonlight night, leaping off into the moonshine from Lovers' Leaps—in squads.”
The big Bannerman girl kept hammering away at him.
“So you don't believe in love?” she inquired, looking up into his eyes.
“I never was very strong on the moonlight stuff,” he told her. He had never cared for her kind; a little of such slapstick work on the part of women went a long way with him.
“And you've never believed in women! You've never idealized women, have you?” she insisted.
“Love them, sure!” said Schmaar. ”

“ John Schmaar started them off with the argument that women were cowards naturally.
“It's simple enough,” he told them, half in earnest. “That's the way God made 'em. They don't look like battle-ships, many of 'em,” he said, passing the big Bannerman girl a glance. “Do they? And if that's the idea God has about them, why fly in His face? We like them soft and clinging and needing us—that is, every natural-minded man does. We like 'em to be pretty little cowards.”
“Oh, you males! You ferocious males!” cried the Hunter girl to the automatic Captain, who responded with a jerky smile. ”

“ THEY were all gathered now quite close to the edge—all but the Dulcifer girl, who still held back.
“She jumped!” cried the Hunter girl suddenly. “She saved him!”
“And let me tell you,” the Bannerman girl put in, “another thing. She did it—she jumped. But the men, you notice, didn't jump much after her!”
That was her pose, bold and free—like a good many of her kind, too big and awkward to be kittenish. There have been more and more of them since the war, John Schmaar decided. ”

“ And you'll see which has the more courage—the male or the female, when there's anything at stake. You just take a partridge when they have their chicks running around—the way she'll try to fool you—to save them. It's wicked—that's all! But it's nature too, just nature!”
“Bully for you,” shouted the Bannerman girl, looking at John Schmaar out of the corner of her eyes, but he was looking at Aileen Dulcifer, who sat with eyes shining and her lips open. Schmaar understood now—and he had to smile a little, in spite of himself. ”

“ This Westerner, this Gladden who controlled it, had been abroad with the army, and after the war had stayed across, enjoying life in France, neglecting his business—as so many have done, especially the young ones, who think they have struck it rich at last. The first thing to do under such circumstances—as no one on earth knew better than John Schmaar—is to run out and play, and neither pay attention to your own business nor let anybody else pay attention to it for you. ”

“ And this girl was certainly most pleasing. Even after all this crying, her face was as soft and fresh and dewy as a grieving child's.
“But now I'm here,” she asked monotonously, “what good will it do? What can I do?”
She was working out of her hysterics, he perceived.
“That's easy. You can let me straighten out your affairs, as you ought to have done in the first place.”
“Why, there's nothing left to straighten out,” she declared. “It's all gone, practically. There's probably not enough to pay my bills.”
“All right,” said Schmaar quite calmly. “I'll pay them then.” ”

“ Schmaar argued. “All men and all women are cowards, sometime, if they know where they're wise—or they wouldn't keep on living! The time comes when everybody's got to step out of the way—if he isn't a fool—just on the same principle that everybody has his price sometime. And it's no different with women. The only difference is that women are weaker and go first.”
He could see the Westerner scowling at him in disagreement before the Hunter girl broke in.
“That's strange talk, Mr. Schmaar from you!” she stated, turning her eyes from Armitage to him. ”

“ Little light desires, little fluttering fancies, small frail feminine appetites for little pleasures—with the morality of an orchid, the soul of a canary and just as bad and good as either.
They couldn't break away—and live, And after all, you must remember, young as they are and innocent-looking, they aren't entirely ignorant and unworldly—after that life they lead gadding and peering about the hotels and theaters and streets of New York. John Schmaar was curious to see just how this one would take the next move in his game. ”

“ It had been a surprise to him, her darting out there after what he knew about how she felt concerning it. He couldn't imagine one of those light, self-centered, pretty little cowards taking a chance for anything alive—unless it were, perhaps, herself.
“That doesn't worry me,” he told the Bannerman girl.
“What does? What does worry you?” she asked.
“I wish I'd bought something more exclusive, that's all, when I laid out my money here,' Schmaar replied. “Some more select feature! When you buy a story for your place, you want a new one. ”

“ He knew the girl so much better than she knew herself. New York bred its great new crop of them every year. The idle, pleasure-hunting girl of the great city—not selfish, merely ignorant that anyone else was living on the planet ”

“ The story of the man—the boy spendthrift on Broadway—is as common and familiar throughout America as the older story of the time-famous prodigal of two thousand years ago. But the woman spendthrift, though less known, is not so very much less common. Drawn into the great city from every quarter of the United States, with fresh money in their hands to spend, thousands and tens of thousands each year leave it there—to the satisfaction of those who sell them the gossamers that it goes for—in the theaters, the tea-rooms, the rows of women's shops. ”

“ However, she played the game and held the pose that she had developed. Light and young and ornamental, rather secretive in her own small affairs, she let the man develop his own dreams of her. How far she had really gone with him Schmaar did not know. He had not asked her, and she had not told. But he felt fairly sure that she felt him to be secure—if from nothing else than the relief and cheerfulness of her manner. A dimple in the cheek of a girl can speak quite loudly at times. She was engaged to him by now, without doubt, Schmaar thought. ”

“ The thing we all go by—the saying we've all operated on in this country.”
“What?” asked the Bannerman girl blankly.
“God hates a quitter. God hates a coward,” he replied. “That's my religion. About all I've got, but I believe that hard. And I believe it covers almost everything.”
He couldn't possibly stop now, and one reason, John Schmaar saw, was probably the way Aileen Dulcifer was gazing at him—drinking it all in, trying to memorize it, apparently.
“You take the war,” Gladden was saying. “There weren't many natural heroes you might say. ”

“ Soft, pretty, protected, the spoiled children of our time,—in cities like New York especially,—women created and kept for their own special pleasant uses, come suddenly, with hurt and wild surprise, face to face with the hard realities of life. ”

“ She gave way again to weeping, and John Schmaar continued to watch her. Funny things, he thought. Absolutely artificial! The first sight of the world as it really is for most people throws them into violent hysterics.
“But that isn't the worst, either,” she said, sitting up.
“What is?” asked Schmaar, after a proper wait.
“Boarding-houses!” said the girl, and snatched her hand from him again to cover up her face. ”

“ John Schmaar said to himself, “will surprise you—when she finds out your money's gone!” But aloud he said: “You say, and I say, any woman could make this jump here if she wanted to. You believe it, and I believe it. It isn't so hard to do for anybody that has nerve. We all agree on that.
“So, now, then,” said Schmaar, “just to prove we're right, just to add a little sporting interest to the proceeding—we've had quite a lot of assorted vocal moonshine here,” he added, watching Gladden, “—I'm going to give all of you girls a chance to demonstrate it—to make good as heroines. ”

“ I think he has got it all right, but all wrong too.”
“How could that be?” the Hunter girl asked him, her eyes lingering wonderingly on Gladden's face. “All right, and all wrong!”
“HOW they love to play with it!” John Schmaar thought, watching them.
“He's just got it upside down, that's all, I think,” the Westerner explained. “The main thing in the world that drives it isn't cowardice. It's courage. That's all there is in the world of any consequence, anyhow, in my opinion.
“You know what we've always said in the West,” he proceeded, with all the women's eyes hanging on him. ”

“ They build whole streets for the purveyors of feminine joys, those various trades in trifles, as profitable to the countless traders as that earlier deal with other fanciers of beads and gauds by which Manhattan was first acquired. ”

“ And then he went on reminding her of his past relations, his obligations to her father—although of course these had been paid and well paid for years ago.
“Of course,” he told her then, “if you want to, you can help me along still more than by just keeping him here—in putting through this financing. Of course, there are always plenty who will knock me, if for nothing else than on my past record. It doesn't always help me along—the fact that I started out life as a professional gambler. I don't deny the fact as plenty of others do. ”

“ AND then they all fell to talking about men and women and cowardice. It was the usual man-and-woman talk of an idle Sunday afternoon, mostly, of course, about the women—the men, as always, glad to speculate about the women; the women, as usual, not much displeased at being speculated about. ”

“ IT was late that next afternoon before she got a chance to. They were playing bridge all Sunday night, going pretty strong; and they weren't satisfied to stop when it was time for the last ferry back to New York. So at Schmaar's suggestion they adjourned over to the next night. The two men agreed to come back again, and the girls all stayed on. So Aileen Dulcifer didn't have a chance at Schmaar alone, until he appeared late Monday afternoon a little before the other men. ”

“ The strong eats the weak; and the weak gets out of the way.”
“What a horrible idea of life, isn't it?” exclaimed Eloise Hunter, turning her faithful eyes to the mechanical officer at her side, who nodded just perceptibly.
{{di|S}C}HMAAR could see that what he was saying didn't please the Westerner much. But what did he care now what Gladden thought? He rather enjoyed roughing him.
Aileen Dulcifer, looking at them both moved a little uneasily and started to say something, but Billie Bannerman, as usual, got in ahead of her. ”