Page:The Smart Set (Volume 71).djvu/524

10 —separate identities lost within iron helms even as his own selfness was lost behind white sheeting—moving in a strangely clear white light toward Jerusalem.

Beyond the lone figure in the foreground the glass held long marching columns, massive phalanxes of men who were iron under their snowy robes with emblazoned scarlet crosses going out to meet the Saracen; sunlight glinting on weapons and trappings of gold and silver and on plumes and banners of green and crimson and purple; dust swirling behind and overhead. And somewhere in one of those sacred regiments was he who had once been Bert Pirtle but who now was simply—with an almost divine simplicity—a knight.

He was unused to dreams of such intensity—the Bert Pirtle who stood in front of the bureau mirror—his body quivered, he breathed gulpingly, perspiration started from his pores. Never had he known such exaltation, not even at the initiation the night before, when he had stood on Nigger Hill among a white-shrouded throng, grotesque in the light of a gigantic bonfire, listening to and repeating a long, strange, inspiring, and not easily comprehensible oath.

Presently the swirling dust blotted out the files of men in the mirror and then out of the saffron cloud came a single rider all in white upon a white charger—another who rode in a Cause. A second school-day memory came to the man who dreamed; under the white hood his mouth muttered a name. “Galahad!”

The bedroom door opened. A baby tripped over the sill, thudded in a heap on the floor, rolled into the room, and bounced to its feet with awkward lightness. The child’s eyes widened at the sight of the figure before the bureau, two pink palms beat the air, a shriek of pure ecstasy came from its mouth. It tottered across the floor toward the man, gurgling joyously:

“Peekaboo! Papa play peekaboo!”



RUNETTES believe in suffocating their victims. Blondes accomplish the same effect by attrition.



HE most comical sight in the world is the spectacle of a serious man talking to a red-headed woman.



HE most unreliable statement in the world is a fat woman’s account of what she eats.