Glamour

a short story

Whispering in the glowing dark, in a voice of aching hushed intensity that rushed out from his open soul, Mr. Clark Gable spoke: "Don't say goodbye. I couldn't stand it if we said goodbye!" He pressed his hungry mouth onto the woman's throat below her ear.

Mrs. Betty Harken pressed a hanky to her open mouth to mute her gasp. She was truly trembling this time. The large glowing close-up of his noble countenance, there in the intimate darkness of the matinee, was just the way he would have looked in bedroom dusk. Imagination's phantom touch played on her skin while vivid carnal images flooded her mind's eye. What if she actually had relations with this man of the strong open heart? How would it be? How would it be from beginning to end? With her girlfriends there at left and right the place was safe; she knew that if they saw or heard there'd be no fuss. So Mrs. Harken leaned forward, whispering very quietly behind her handkerchief to Mr. Gable; "Don't go! Don't go!" She pressed her handbag deep into her lap as if it were his hand.

This was their guilty pleasure, she and her friends. They'd gotten through the War in perfect innocence this way, chatting to each other that the actors were just like their missing men. Then when the War was done and Bill and the others came home safe, their little movie club had quite dissolved in hopes of married bliss. The ladies were all thrilled at first with honeymoon thoughts but then they grew despondent when the hopes went crash. They found how hard and troubled the real men had become in just those few enormous missing years. All four of them, all of their men, seemed sullen or angry or else driven by hard desperation in the times of joy, as though the world were still at siege. These real men seemed quite overfilled with strange relentless memories that left scant room for tender open simple sorts of love to come a-creeping in. There was no music left in it, no art.

It had been she, Betty Harken, who had pulled the girls back together, got them going to the shows again. It was no innocent pleasure for her now but a guilty one, she even with a baby now. Now she allowed herself to really consciously lust for these other men. She took the mental pictures home to paste onto the moments that she really had. She sometimes wondered secretly if with this choice her youth was given up as well as innocence.

Up on the screen, the man and woman kissed in deep embrace. The music rose in spirals and the whole scene spun. She felt the burning flush upon her cheeks and breast, felt her trembling body edging closer toward the climax, so she forced herself to sit back, forced her mind to think of Bill instead, forced her body to relax. Later; she told herself.

Afterward, the girls were sitting crowded in the small back booth just a few blocks over at the Blue Moon Cafe. They sipped their coffee, nibbled at their sugar rolls. It was daylight now. It was an autumn afternoon, edging now toward dusk, a Saturday like any other. Half an hour more and they'd go home.

"Betty!" Mrs. Ethel Jackson said. "Did you see that dress? In the street scene at the flower shop. Did you notice that?"

The conversation had not turned yet onto the serious topic of the men.

Emily spoke in Betty's place; "What dress?"

"At the flower shop."

"Oh yes!" Laura Dvorjic interjected. "The one with the full skirt? How could they let her wear such an ugly thing?"

"Ugly! No!" Ethel spoke enthusiastically. "I really liked it."

They all agreed or disagreed.

These four young married ladies were sitting at their coffee cups and plates as if the world around did not exist. The crowded little diner was full of human sounds and cooking smells and yet they felt that if they huddled here together there would be some kind of bubble all around to hide their shared desires and troubles. This particular booth stood in a sort of semi-hidden elbow of the place in a wallpapered corner. There were even low wooden screens put up behind the seat-backs in the Blue Moon's booths to reassure the patrons of imaginary privacy.

There was something someone said about another dress, but Betty Harken then was looking out to the big window in the cafe's front. She found herself preoccupied with wondering whether Gary Cooper really would be shy if you could spend a night with him alone. How would you touch him first? There was a man out on the sidewalk there beyond the glass beneath the backward painted letters of the cafe's sign, a tall lean man in a neat suit leaning on a cane. She wondered why that fellow out there made her think so strongly of the actor. Perhaps it was the way he seemed to sag as he leaned, seeming borne down by deep and secret pain. "Mr. Lewis!" That was a start; she realized she knew the fellow, one of the high school teachers. Then she realized that she had spoken his name out loud.

"I beg your pardon?" said Laura, always polite yet unhappy to be interrupted.

Betty looked about at her three friends. She looked back to the large front glass. She was alarmed to find Mr. Lewis, as though the distance did not exist, looking back right in at her.

She broke off the glance with him very quick. "Don't look!" she cried. "There's a fellow outside there. A history teacher!" She worked part-time as a substitute herself, at the high school some days.

"Lewis?" Emily asked. She knew him too. "Does he see you? Is he coming in?"

"No, I hope not. Oh yes, he's seen me but I hope he won't come in. He's just like Gary Cooper."

Emily craned about part way as if inspecting something on the further wall, and let her eyes go on to peek. "He's coming in!" Emily Gorham knew the fellow pretty well. She had no babies yet and so she still was working full time at the school. In a rather scathing bitter voice she whispered; "What a drag! I hope he won't come over."

"Why?" laughed Ethel. "What's the matter with him?"

"He's such a sap. All he wants is a shoulder to cry on. I've had enough of that!" Emily turned her face stonily to them, away from the whole world and just to them, as if their psychic wall of privacy must be rebuilt.

"What's wrong with him?" Betty repeated the question.

"Hush!" said Laura and Ethel both.

"I didn't know you went for the Gary Cooper type!" said Emily out loud, still dripping acid.

Betty could not help but lean out and stare at the poor man limping into the crowded noisy narrow place, though Laura secretly clamped a hand upon her knee to try and make her stop. She thought the fellow leaned more heavily on the cane than she had seen him do before. The soft fedora hat was pulled down hard upon his head, a shiny military pin stuck on the band in place of any feather. His gait was slow and rather halting. He did halt for a moment by the counter where some other fellows looked up for a greeting and shook his hand. But then he looked toward their booth again and found Betty's eyes were on him; a sudden spark glimmered in the shadows of his gloomy face. He came on back toward them.

So then at last he stood there at their table's open end. He was a tall man with rather sunken hollow eyes and cheeks, still young, well dressed. Above his pocket's neatly folded handkerchief, on his heart, there hung a tiny medal on a ribbon. The nice gray flannel suit seemed half a size too large, as if he'd shrunk within. The others, all but Emily, looked up.

He reached to tip his hat. It seemed a mortal effort done by force of will. In a voice that seemed more deeply sad than any Betty had ever heard, even on a movie screen, he finally spoke. "Good day, ladies!" The words were very slow, as if dragged up from silent depths to stand in place of other words he could not say. His eyes were lingering on Betty's form and face in an obviously yearning gaze

Betty nearly blushed. She said; "Hello Mr. Lewis!" She reached to touch her throat below her ear, to show the wedding ring and hide at least one breast.

But Emily looked up directly into the man's eyes then and interrupted with an icy tone; "Hello."

Lewis glanced to Emily and there became stuck. It seemed to take an instant for her cold voice and stony gaze to really sink into him though. When it did, Betty saw his eyes twitch out of focus and she thought a look came into them which was nothing short of terror. But then the horror seemed to pass into the solid pain again. He stood stock still a moment more. He looked beyond the women to some other place. He tipped his hat again. He limped away.

When he was safely gone, hooking his cane onto the counter by an empty stool up near the front, pulling his stiff reluctant body up onto the high backless stool, opening the menu to stare within, then Betty broke the silence. "Emily! That was cruel! He could have pulled a chair over and sat right here, for a minute anyway."

"Did you smell his breath?"

"What?"

"He drinks. It's Saturday afternoon and he's been hitting the sauce already."

Laura said; "I didn't smell it."

"He's staggering!" Emily replied.

"For God's sake;" Betty cried, then leaned forward and tried to whisper; "he was wounded in the War!"

In fact he'd told her that. Last winter sometime Betty had found herself alone by Mr. Lewis standing at the water bubbler in the teacher's lounge. She'd helped him reach a paper cup then asked an ordinary question about his service. He had pulled a few words from deep inside. The Navy. The Pacific. Was he wounded there? Yes, a bomb. And he'd slapped his thigh in a quick angry blow as if the flesh had been a traitor. And then she'd stared into his face while he looked down. She'd seen a most peculiar thing, a look of shame and guilt. Guilt? She'd wondered since. Since then she'd read a scientific article that men who live through battles sometimes feel ashamed to have survived when others died. Thinking of it tugged her heart. Was that it then? At that moment alone with him she had not understood at all but only reached to lay a hand tenderly on his shoulder in the simple sincere hope to reassure a fellow soul.

So now in the coffee shop Betty impatiently tapped her spoon into its saucer and a brown droplet unexpectedly splashed up. She said; "Emily, see here. You could at least be civil. He is a veteran."

"No, you see here. He's such a Sad Sack. Always is. Just like the damn comic strip."

Laura spoke up to that. "Emily, that is cruel. What's gotten into you?"

"Oh!" Emily cried. But then her tone did soften somewhat. "Oh . . !" She looked around to each and all, and found that none yet understood. "Look here; I get enough of that at home. I tried talking to that guy, I really did, and he won't say two words to me. I tried!" She looked around again and found some sympathy was opening in her friends' hearts and so she ventured on into the tale of woe which they had heard a hundred times. "Do you know what I get from my Jimmy now? That same damn Sad Sack shit. Or else, he gets mad and won't even say why. Any goddamn little thing, and I don't even know why. I swear, if Jimmy ever hits me, that's the end. Or else he's all laugh a minute, and that doesn't make any more sense either!" She shook her head emphatically. "I swear, I've had enough of that. I don't need another drunk crazy son of a bitch!" She looked at Betty very firmly and shook her head again. "You don't need it either, sister. Sure not from Gary Cooper over there."

So Ethel trotted out her old stock trick of twisting things into a joke. "Oh!" Ethel said. "I see it now. The green-eyed monster!" She even wagged a comic finger right in Emily's face. "The woman scorned! What? What did you do? You pulled your garters up for him to see, didn't you?"

That got a laugh from Laura and a smile from Betty too.

"You've got a wild imagination, pal!" said Emily.

Then Laura interjected, pointing an accusing finger; "Know what I saw her do one time?"

"No!" cried Emily. "You promised you'd never tell!"

"It was some guy at the department store; she walked right out of the dressing room in front of him and she was still straightening up her tits. In a bathing suit. She did. I was there."

"Liar."

"You did! And then she was soo embarrassed."

All awaited the confession.

"Well . . !" said Emily slowly with a hint of pride and humor too at last; "they are my nicest feature. Shame if no one noticed."

Betty tried to laugh at that just like the others did, but the truth was that she did not care for Emily too much right now. The woman was a foul mouthed tease and flirt. And the cruelty – jealousy or whatever it might be – that was a side of Emily she'd seen before but never quite so plain. The men had sacrificed so much and here this woman was demanding more. But then again, Betty thought, what did she do herself? She deceived her husband quite deliberately. Was that worse? Bill did not know that when she got on top and looked down then she always blurred her eyes and saw and felt inside some different man.

Perhaps he knew and tried hard not to care. Saturday evenings these days, she would come home from the show, the baby still with her mother-in-law for another hour, and Bill would come home from the job. One Saturday the girls indulged in a particularly frank chat about the movie stars and afterward, feeling the pinch of guilt, she asked Bill if he minded that she went. What? Why would he mind? He seemed to be probing for the truth. Some fellows might be jealous, Betty carefully explained. Jealous? He had spoken the word as if it were ridiculous and nonsense. Bill said that he knew she went there for the stars. He said they were a bunch of actors. He clearly felt it was a stupid shallow thing she did. He did not know the depth of feeling that she really had for the beautiful romantic art portrayed upon the screen. He did not know and she did not tell. She did not tell him that his love these days was cold and ugly. That was the kernel of her deceit.

The friends chatted on in good humor now, but Betty's eyes were drawn to the crippled man. He was a profile among the others sitting up there at the counter. A conviction came to her about that moment when she'd lain a comforting hand on that man's shoulder. In that one instant she had done a good and noble deed; suddenly she was convinced of its importance. This philosophical reflection led her on to feeling better. An understanding flowed from it regarding beauty, truth and art. That pure moment of true religious pity was as fine as any actress ever could portray and she had done it in utter simple innocence. That momentary passing scene had grown like one red poppy sprouting from the tangled soil of two people's lives and it would live fresh in memory forever. The understanding seemed too fine for words. There was the blessed innocence opening out of tangled guilt. There was real life more artful than any art.

But then Betty took a start. She saw what he had done. She saw him lift a tall brown bottle to his lips and saw him lean back, pouring a long heedless draught straight down. Lewis glared fiercely at the empty bottle then, set it down, called too loudly for another beer. He had become a drinker. There was a mindless heedless ugly manner to the gesture. All in a flash, she felt betrayed. Her father was a drinker to his dying day. But then she breathed and calmed herself again, asking what right there was to judge.

So then Betty spoke out loud; "Emily, why is he so sad?"

"Who?" Emily craned around to follow Betty's gaze and saw him there. She answered; "Lewis? His wife, I guess."

"His wife?" asked Betty in surprise. There was another actress in the drama.

"Yeah, the poor woman's sick. I met her once or twice. Heart condition. Doesn't get out much, poor thing."

Now what of that? This man was getting drunk here in a public place while his sickly wife at home fretted in his absence. Betty's father was a drinker to his dying day. She bit her tongue. It was not her business what he'd done but all the same, she felt her sympathy had gone to waste.

And so the time ticked on. The girlfriends chatted of this and that. Betty spoke little, preoccupied with watching. To her considerable distress, the second bottle came and went and was replaced by yet a third which was likewise gulped down. Some people by him left and she could see the sandwich on a plate that went untouched. His voice rose too loud once more, with his hand waving some oratorical gesture, so that he heavily leaned to one side and had to grip the counter's edge. The other man beside him pulled him back upright and patted his slumping shoulder. The aproned counter man went over. Betty thought again how she had sympathized and spoken in his favor and even let him leer without objection. She almost spoke out to her friends, almost framed some scathing words to say the homely little diner was becoming a saloon. He put his head down in his hands. There was the very picture of a weak and irresponsible man. There was no innocence and beauty there, no truth transcending all we know. He was no Gary Cooper.

Laura said something about persuading Fred to kiss her better. Emily looked around at the clock, pulled up her cuff to check the time against her watch. There were enough minutes left that she felt no need to mention it. Very frankly, Ethel asked Laura if Fred would kiss her everywhere she wanted; Laura gave a sour look and answered no. Betty said she'd given up on that. "For Heaven's sake;" Ethel spoke in a rueful joke; "they've all been to France."

The demure Laura started in upon a most surprising tale of Monday night. She'd gone to fetch Fred in from the garage for supper. On the moment's inspiration, with black grease still lodged around his fingernails, she had taken down his calendar and leafed through the dirty pictures, him leaning over her shoulder. It was a really filthy one, she said. And she had gotten him to touch her like the people in one of the pictures did. She blushed in telling it.

Very startled then, Betty realized that Mr. Lewis was stumbling past. He did not look at them but staggered back on toward the toilets. Betty shuddered in disgust. "I'd better go!" she said.

"What?" asked Laura, glancing at her watch. "There's a little while left."

Betty said she must pick up the baby.

"Well . . !" said Ethel quite surprised, "Well, you might straighten up your hat. And call me about that bank account. Okay?"

"Yes, I will."

Betty quickly stood and brushed the crumbs off of her lap. She was in a rush now, hoping to get out before the dreadful fellow reappeared. She'd look into the window glass to fix the hat. Driven by a mental picture of him urinating, picking up her purse, she quite forgot it was her turn to pay. She wound a hurried way between the tables and the customers and made the door. Out on the sidewalk finally, in the creeping deepening dusk, she gulped the autumn air then turned to look into the glass as she had planned. The homely little restaurant, seen from outside here, was like a deep perspective painting full of glaring light and shade, and seemed a dirtier place than it had been before. Next week, she thought, they must go to the Busy Bee instead. She folded her arms tight to embrace herself against the coming chill.

Looking up and down the street, she spied the big elm across the way that was turning autumn gold. She tried to conjure up some bit of verse about that sort of thing to elevate her thoughts; Emerson perhaps, or Dickinson or Keats. She could set a class of students to the task. There was a taxi waiting at the corner; should she take the cab or walk? These good shoes pinched a little on the toes. She had the necessary cash. She walked a few steps toward the taxi up there at the corner. Damn! she thought, it was her turn to pay the cafe check. The next few steps she almost ran.

She was a thoughtful, careful, intelligent woman who took great pride in being fair. Was it Shakespeare, she wondered, trying to recall, who wrote that little poem where he's in despair because his lover "shits"? That was the last word of the final line. She frowned and shook her head at her own attitude. For Heaven's sake, the man had drunk some beer and gone to pee. She'd read the poem once in college; was it Shakespeare? In college she had tippled some herself. So what had gotten into her? It was the damn romantic movies. It was her own unyielding sense of guilt. She had flown into a fantasy where she was pure and holy muse to a noble wounded warrior, like a tale from Camelot. She shook her head again to clear the unaccountable tears and looked about and gripped her purse and walked a few steps on.

And yet he was a wounded warrior true. And there had been one moment of utter innocence when she had reached to comfort him. That moment obviously had touched his soul so that he sought her out among the others of this crowded world. But then the sick wife, that was the thing which brought the truth to light. It would be a true romance, it truly would, except that the nobility was now corrupted in his soul. She was a muse without a worthy poet once again. The man was out here getting drunk and ogling women while his legal wife sat home alone. There was real ugliness in that.

And then a startling shout in a strange voice came from behind. It jerked her from the reverie and she turned to look. Lewis and another smaller fellow, the aproned counter man, were standing just outside the cafe door. The smaller fellow waved his arm. Lewis leaned upon him with the cane dangling from his free hand. The smaller man was shouting for the taxi cab.

It was her cab by rights. The men were just a few yards back and the checker-painted car was half a block away, across the street, its back to them. She looked that way; the taxi didn't move; the driver didn't hear. What if she simply hurried on to it? That's what Emily would have done. Christ! she told herself; he was a wounded veteran; she couldn't even think of it. But she plainly couldn't share a cab with a leering boozing sot. Thoughts came of the fellow pawing at her clothes; that confirmed her sudden choice. She'd walk away.

So Betty turned right on her heel. That put her going back toward them but the sidewalk here was wide enough that she could walk right at the curb and miss a confrontation. Lewis now was hobbling on alone, the little fellow watching in concern in case he fell. She came to him, Betty stepping briskly and he slowly hobbling with the cane an arm's reach off. He looked into her face; she looked away without a word. The woman stepped right past, right through the cloud of desolation that engulfed and emanated from him. She quite distinctly felt him stop and gaze at her retreating form and felt him reach to silently raise his hat. He whispered toward her back, quite pathetically; "Good day!" She quite distinctly felt the fearful sadness which then fell upon him as she went.

That Saturday, she could not bear the thought of sex with Bill. She switched the radio on to concert music, lay down on the sofa with a book and claimed a touch of cramp when Bill arrived and knelt there for a kiss. Bill disappeared into the kitchen, made some kitchen sounds, reappeared and knelt again to mention various things that he might fix to eat. Betty nearly pulled him close, but felt so pleased and so relaxed that she chose scrambled eggs with cheese instead, a helping of buttered green beans on the side.

Actually, of course, the early supper took too long. When things were made and the table set, all of it by dear Bill, when the wife and man had filled their stomachs' appetites and smiled across the plates, the hour had gone some minutes past to fetch their baby. She told him that she must. She was afraid, she truly said, to take advantage of his mother's patience. He was disappointed but agreed. He went to fetch the baby in her place.

That night between the diapers and his weariness, he found the necessary time to court his wife. He fetched her pillows to the sofa, made a pillow of his lap awhile, his hand upon her breast and hers upon his arm. He answered questions that she asked about his work. He leaned down for caresses and a kiss then held her hand. Shortly though, he must jump up to get the baby this or that. He'd tried sometimes before to show this kind of tenderness and finally, happily, now found his wife accepting it. He worried though; perhaps she felt quite ill.

For her part though, this was a most surprising luxury which she had never known. She tried to reassure him several times about her health without ever quite saying that she'd lied. Several times while this went on, Betty spoke to herself in new-found wonder; I really have a husband. Next time when Bill sat down, she nestled her head into his open lap and looked up with the most provocative smile that she could find. She reached to give her husband's thigh a most provocative pinch.

After the minutes later when they went to lay their infant in its tiny bed, before the coming minute when the husband's limbs would be too tired to stretch, they found a half an hour of honeymoon. They found the easy way of lying face to face, a thing they'd done before they were engaged, before the War, and rediscovered now. This time, she gladly thought, there was no fortress wall between the semen and its womb. Hera of the marriage bed would choose their fate. He gently rocked them both in deep embrace and she pressed her fingertips onto his face and watched the pictures of some other faces flicker on the dim-lit contours there. None of the other faces stuck. Deep in content and growing joy, she thought this moment must be one of Chaucer's tales. Even that poor fellow Lewis whom she'd flirted with; when that mournful ghost appeared he lingered but one instant longer than the posturing phantoms of the movies did.

Her mother came that Sunday, and her sister, and her sister's toddler boy, and the friendly Hendersons from across the way. Her sister's husband had gone out of town for work. She made a big meat loaf with the canned soup recipe, mashed potatoes, the special candied carrots, greens. She'd bought the more expensive coffee and a pretty cake. Bill embraced her several times, quite by surprise sometimes, as she did him. In the kitchen, Mother said; "I guess you two are really married now!" Between the people leaving, when the evening radio shows were coming on, between the diapers and the bottles and the rocking chair and soap and towels and all, with violins that sighed like scratchy ocean breezes on the phonograph, they came to each other among some plates and cups and pillows and an old quilt on the living room floor behind closed drapes and there disrobed each other and there made love.

The problem was, she thought, that she had not grown up. So what, she thought, if tonight is not last night; she must get used to that. It was too planned tonight, without the same discoveries. When it was time, they tried the gentle way at first but found he was too energetic and well rested. The penetration was too shallow for his appetite. Hoping for the best, she took another more exotic pose from a description in a book and coached him what to do. She felt the penetration hard and deep and moved with it and let herself sigh with his groans. Hot semen flowed.

Hoping for the best, she got him up again with a little work and climbed astride. There was a way to bend her hips that made it fine enough. She even took and placed his fingers for a certain touch. She hadn't done that in a while. Why had she been so cruel to Mr. Lewis? But she wasn't cruel. It was not her job to heal the sick and lame. The cruelty she'd truly done was in that comforting touch itself and in the kindly looks. In such a state as his, that must seem quite like promises of love. It had been right to walk away.

She thought of Gary Cooper then, what he had been to her, and Cary Grant. She looked at Bill and thought that here her husband was in the actual act of love, and this was real. With his other hand kneading her breast like a loaf of bread, she thought of babies and the climax came. Lying bathed in sweat, her husband's fingers where she wished at last, her head now pillowed on his strong leg, she swore quite solemnly that now she was a wife.

Monday morning half past eight o'clock, Bill gone off to work, the baby crawling where the two-backed beast had been, the telephone rang. She dropped the broom and went to pick it up. It was Miss Hodges at the high school. She was the secretary there. Could Betty take a long assignment? Perhaps a month? She told Miss Hodges that she'd try to set things up. She had agreed with Bill to earn all that she could until the next new baby came. She called Bill's mother, heard it ring until it was picked it up. The lady laughed and definitely agreed. Betty called Miss Hodges back.

Was it a month for sure? Probably. At least. An unexpected opening had occurred.

At just past ten o'clock she pushed a way into the high school office. The place was crowded full with moving people large and small, with many objects in their hands. Miss Hodges sat at a typewriter at a back desk, evidently watching for her, just then glancing up when Betty arrived.

The woman stood at once and spoke quite loud and terse; "Mrs. Harken!"

"Yes?"

"Mr. Parmenter will see you."

Miss Hodges led the way through the gate and round a corner to a glass windowed door, but Betty put a hand upon her arm to make her stop and speak a moment there. What was the opening?

The secretary seemed distressed and harried both at once. "Mr. Lewis won't be coming back!" She hurried off.

Now what was that? The man had gotten drunk and shouting in a public place. What further mischief had he done? He was well liked here at the school; he'd be forgiven much. How serious must the problem be to make this fuss?

Mr. Parmenter then performed a whole little act of opening wide the door and helping with her chair. He was a portly older balding gentleman with a sagging jowly face. He sat back down. Betty meant to ask some proper question but he spoke first. "Well," he slowly said, "something's happened!" He looked into her eyes and waited.

"I understand that I'll be taking Mr. Lewis' classes. It's all history?"

"Yes. Well then, you've heard the news? His wife . . . and all?"

"His wife? His wife? No, I haven't heard, only that Mr. Lewis won't be teaching here."

Parmenter was in a vest that strained its buttons, a rumpled shirt and bright bow tie askew, leaning forward on his elbows with fingers very tightly entwined so that his pudgy hands together made a single pudgy fist. His answer to her words at first was nothing but a rather stunned look until he said; "You haven't heard?"

"No, not at all."

Parmenter leaned further toward her over the large desk. He fell into a whisper. "I don't know how to tell the students."

"But tell them what?"

"You haven't heard?"

"No! Please!"

"Well;" the fat man carefully and reluctantly spoke; "you see, last Friday night his wife passed on."

"What!"

"You didn't know? Were you a friend? After all, there was the heart condition."

Her mouth had fallen quite agape. She tried to pray a childhood prayer from Sunday school but only found the words: Oh God! And then on Saturday?

She spoke; "What has Mr. Lewis done?"

"He shot a bullet through his head, at home, this morning."