3

Welding's jewellery store occupied the best corner on the proper side of State Street. In its long series of show window's, resting on velvet of appropriate colours, backed by mirrors, were bracelets, lockets, rings, necklaces, 'dog-collars' of matched pearls, diamond tiaras, watches, chests of silverware, silver bowls, cups and ornaments, articles in cut glass, statuettes of ebony, bronze and jade, and here and there, in careless little heaps, scattered handfuls of unmounted gems—rubies, emeralds, yellow, white and blue diamonds, and rich-coloured semi-precious stones.

But all this without over-emphasis. There were no built-up, glittering pyramids, no placards, no price-tags even. There was instead, despite the luxury of the display, a restraint; as if it were more a concession to the traditions of sound shop-keeping than an appeal for custom. For Welding's was known, had been known through a long generation, from Pittsburg to Omaha. Welding's, like the Art Institute, Hooley's Theatre, Devoe's candy store, Field's buses, Central Music Hall, was a Chicago institution, playing its inevitable part at every well-arranged wedding as in every properly equipped dining-room. You couldn't give any one you really cared about a present of jewellery in other than a Welding box. Not if you were doing the thing right! Oh, you could, perhaps....

And Welding's, from the top-booted, top-hatted doorman (such were not common in Chicago then) to the least of the immaculately clad salesmen, was profoundly, calmly, overpoweringly aware of its position.

Before the section of the window that was devoted to rings stood Henry.

About him pressed the throng of early-afternoon shoppers—sharp-faced women, brisk business men, pretty girls in pretty clothes, messenger boys, loiterers and the considerable element of foreign-appearing, rather shabby men and women, boys and girls that were always an item in the Chicago scene. Out in the wide street the traffic, a tangle of it (this was before the days of intelligent traffic regulation anywhere in America) rolled and rattled and thundered by—carriages, hacks, delivery wagons, two-horse and three-horse trucks, and trains of cable-cars, each with its flat wheel or two that pounded rhythmically as it rolled. And out of the traffic—out of the huge, hive-like stores and office-buildings, out of the very air as breezes blew over from other, equally busy streets, came a noise that was a blend of noises, a steady roar, the nervous hum of the city.

But of all this Henry saw, heard, nothing; merely pulled at his moustache and tapped his cane against his knee.

A wanly pretty girl, with short yellow hair curled kinkily against her head under a sombrero hat, loitered toward him, close to the window; paused at his side, brushing his elbow; glanced furtively up under her hat brim; smiled mechanically, showing gold teeth; moved around him and lingered on the other side; spoke in a low tone; finally, with a glance toward the fat policeman who stood, in faded blue, out in the thick of things by the car tracks, drifted on and away.

Henry had neither seen nor heard her.

Brows knit, lips compressed, eyes nervously intent, he marched resolutely into Welding's.

'Look at some rings!' he said, to a distrait salesman.

He indicated, sternly, a solitaire that looked, he thought, about like Martha's.

'How much is that?'

'That? Not a bad stone. Let me see... Oh, three hundred dollars.'

Henry, huskily, in a dazed hush of the spirit, repeated the words:—

'Three—hundred—dollars!'

The salesman tapped with manicured fingers on the showcase.

'Have you—have you—have you...

The salesman raised his eyebrows.

'... any others?'

'Oh, yes, we have others.' He drew out a tray from the wall behind him. 'I can show fairly good stones as low as sixty or eighty dollars. Here's one that's really very good at a hundred.'

There was a long silence. The glistening finger nails fell to tapping again.

'This one, you say is—one hundred?'

'One hundred.'

Another silence. Then:—

'Thank you. I—I was just sorta looking around.'

The salesman began replacing the trays.

Henry moved away; slowly, irresolutely, at first; then, as he passed out the door, with increasing speed. At the corner of Randolph he was racing along. He caught the two-fourteen for Sunbury by chasing it the length of the platform. Henry could do the hundred yards under twelve seconds at any time with all his clothes on. He could do it under eleven on a track.

By a quarter to three he was walking swiftly, with dignity, up Simpson Street. He turned in at the doorway beside Hemple's meat-market and ran up the long stairway to the offices above.

Humphrey strolled in from the composing room.

'Seen those people already, Hen?'

'I—you see—well, no. I'm going right back in. On the three-eight.'

'Going back? But——'

'It's this way, Hump. I—it'll seem sorta sudden, I know—you see, I want to get an engagement ring. There's one that would do all right, I think, for—well, a hundred dollars—and I was wondering....'

Humphrey stared at him; grinned.

'So you've gone and done it! You don't say! You are a bit rapid, Henry. The lady must have been on the train.'

'No—not quite—you see...'

'Got to be done right now, eh? All in a rush?'

'Well, Hump...

'Wait a minute! Let me collect my scattered faculties. If you've got to this point it's no good trying to reason——'

'But, Hump, I'll be reasonable——'

'Yes, I know. Now listen to me! This appears to come under the general head of emergencies. We're not quite in such bad shape as we were a month back. There's a little advertising revenue coming in. An——'

'Yes, I thought——'

'And you've certainly sunk enough in this old property—'

'No more than you, Hump——'

'Just wait, will you! I don't see but what we've got to stand back of you. Perhaps we'd better enter it as a loan from the business to you until I can think up a better excuse. Or no, I'll tell you—call it a salary advance. Well, something! I'll work it out. Never you mind now. And if you're going to stop at the bank and catch the three-eight you'll have to step along.'

It would have interested a student of psychophysics, I think, to slip a clinical thermometer in under Henry's tongue as he sat, erect, staring, with nervously twitching hands and feet, on the three-eight train.