Al was surprised. "Are you with O'Mara?" he asked.
"Am I with him?" answered Moxey with a sob in his voice; "am I with him—he's me cousin."
"O'Marayourcousin?"
"Lipkowsky's his right name—same as mine. Look at his beak and see."
There was no doubt of it. "Kid O'Mara's" proboscis corroborated Moxey's claim.
Johnny's entrance a few minutes later was still more effective and his reception warmer. Fight fans are courtiers, always with the king.
When the two boys stripped, Johnny showed short and stocky, the Kid lank and lithe. Johnny depended on his punch, the Kid on his reach.
They fought ten rounds and it was called a draw, probably a just decision inasmuch as the adherents of each contestant proclaimed that the referee had been corrupted against their man.
Besides, a draw meant another fight between them with plenty of money in the house.
This evening in fistiana was perhaps the most powerful single experience which influenced Al at this period of his life. For a long time he sat silent beside Moxey on the return trip, pondering the physical beauty of Johnny and the Kid and ruefully comparing their bodies with his own.
He sighed, "And now I s'pose your cousin'll go out and kill it to-night!"
"Not him," Moxey reassured; "he never touches it in any form or shape, understand."
"He's training all the time?" continued Al, bent on deciphering the secret ways of greatness.
"Yep. So you might say."
"Oh," then Al relapsed into silence to wrestle with the angel of training all the time.
Like most young fellows, Al regarded his body as the source of all the happiness that amounted to anything. The brain was merely its adjunct, its money maker and guide. Its operations might lead to life, but they were not life like the body's.
It flashed upon him in the train bound home from the fight that he might achieve joy in either of two ways, by going in for sports or "sporting," by perfecting the animal in him or by abusing it, by getting into as good shape as Kid O'Mara or into as bad shape as the pale waster crumpled in the seat across the aisle.
So began a struggle in him, not yet ended, between the Ormuzd and Ahriman of physical condition. His high achievement thus far has been sixth place in a river Marathon swimming race, his completest failure thirty-six successive drunken hours in the restricted district.
Al wasn't much of a head at books. Georgia persuaded him to start in high school, but he soon came out, for he found that it interfered with the free expression of his personality. There were too many girls about one and he became extremely apprehensive lest he develop into a regular lah-de-dah.
Georgia was more afraid of his developing into a regular rough and tough, so they had a very intense time of it in the flat while the question was under discussion.
Mother Talbot sided with neither of them. She wanted Al to continue his instructions, but in the institutions under the direction of the Church. She couldn't reconcile herself to Al's getting his learning in a place where the very name of God was banned, as it was in the public schools.
Indeed in her opinion, and you couldn't change it, no, not if you argued from now until the clap of doom, the main trouble with everything nowdays was impiety and weakening of faith, brought about how? Why, by these public schools, these atheist factories that were ashamed of the Saviour.
For her part, she couldn't see her son going to one of them with any peace of mind, and she wanted them both to remember, that he would go against her consent and in spite of her prayers. What's more, if he was undutiful in this matter he'd probably find himself sitting between a Jew and a nigger, which she must say would serve him right.
Did Georgia think, she inquired on another occasion, that the priests weren't up to teaching Al, or what? To be sure, learning was a fine thing for a boy starting out in the world and she approved of it as much as any one, but who ever heard of an ordinary priest who hadn't more wisdom in his little finger than a public school teacher had in her whole silly head!
In a church school he would receive instructions not only in temporal, but also in divine learning. He would be taught not merely history and mathematics and such like, but also goodness and pure living, which were far more important for any young fellow.
But Georgia could not be convinced. She said she had been to a convent and if she had it to do over again she would go to public high school—just as Al, who not only was a considerate and loving brother, but also could see clearly how sorry he would be in after life if he didn't, was about to decide to do.
She finally had her way and Al picked up his burden—and found it not so difficult to carry after all. For he joined the Alpha Beta Gammas and rose rapidly in that order, becoming its most expert and weariless initiator, a very terror to novitiates. But precisely at the moment when the Alpha Bets reached the zenith of their glory, the skies fell upon them—the edict coming from above that all fraternities must go.
Al went too. The place was indubitably fit for nothing but girls now. And whatever Georgia might say, this time he was going to stick, for in the last analysis she was a female and her words subject to discount.
He stuck, discounting the female; and she was distressed like a mother robin in the tree, whose youngling, that has just fluttered down, persists in hopping out of the long grass upon the shaven lawn, when, as all robinhood knew, there were cats in the kitchen around the corner of the house.
It is the impulse of youth to travel far in search of marvels, a vestige, so it is said, of the nomadic stage of human development, when the race itself was young. It was as member of a demonstration crew for a vacuum cleaning machine that Al enjoyed hiswanderjahre. He went among strange people and heard the babbling of many tongues without passing out of Chicago.
Like a reporter, or a mendicant friar of old, he knocked on all doors. The slouch, the slattern, the miser and the saint opened to him; the pale young mother with a child at her breast and another at her skirts and both her eyes black and blue; or the gray old sewing woman who for her plainness had known neither the bliss nor the horror of a man. One rolling-mill husky in South Chicago chased him down stairs with a stick of wood, and another heaved his big arm around him and made him come in and wait while little Jerry took the pail to the corner.
He came upon a household where one life was coming as another was going, and a little girl of twelve who could no longer contain the excitement of the day beneath her small bosom followed him into the entry way as he hastily backed out, and whispered between gasps to catch her breath her version of family history in the making.
He learned early the value of the smooth tongue, the timely bluff and the signed contract; and grew rapidly from boy to man in the forcing-bed of the city.
Meanwhile Moxey, not yet twenty, was swimming in a sea of sentiment. There was a young Italian girl who worked in the paper-box factory.
"Angelica," said he, "come to the dance to-night."
"Nit," she responded.
"Why?"
"Oh, they'd give me the laugh, if I——" She paused tactfully.
"Account of——," he drew a semi-circle about his nose and laughed unhappily.
"We-ell." It was explicit enough.
"Can't see a guinea has anything on a Yiddisher." Tit for tat in love's badinage.
"I'm no guinea, I'm not," she exclaimed passionately. "I'm Amurrican."
"So'm I," he answered briskly. "I'm Amurrican—and I don't wear no hoops in my ears." Perhaps that would hold her for a while. It did. She retreated in tears, thinking of her sire's shame.
But her bosom was deep and her lips were as red as an anarchist flag, and her little nose tilted the other way. So why stay mad with her? Her eyebrows nearly met in the center, though she was only sixteen.
And as for dancing—well, he'd looked 'em all over in vaudeville and he couldn't see where they had anything on her. More steps perhaps, but no more looks—or class.
And Angelica went to dances with Irishers, loafers who'd never take care of her, and she wouldn't go with him. Well, he'd see if she wouldn't. He'd own that little nose of hers some day or know why. He'd make money, he'd be rich, he'd woo her with rings and pins and tickets of admission. He would be irresistible in his lavishness.
Johnny Fiteon, bantamweight champion of the world, contributed to the discomforture of those members of his race who liked to dance with Angelica, for on his second time out with Moxey's cousin he lost the decision by a shade.
Moxey knew he would beforehand. Johnny redeemed himself in their next encounter, however, and put the cousin away, so there could be no question about it.
And again Moxey, knowing beforehand that he would, prospered and showered Angelica with brooches. Also he purchased an equity in a two-story frame cottage with Greeks in the basement and Hunkies above. One shouldn't, he reflected, depend too much on sports to keep up the supply of brooches.
"Aggie," said he, as they returned from a dance together, "take a peep at this." He extracted a diamond solitaire pin from his tie and stopping under an arc light gave it to her to examine.
"I seen it," she snapped. "You been flashing it at me all evening. Think I'm blind?"
"Make up into a nice ring, wouldn't it?"
Angelica was wise. She knew what men were after. She didn't work in a paper-box factory for nothing. She would let them go just so far, to be sure, if they were good fellows, but she could draw the line. Indeed she had already drawn it once or twice with five thick little fingers on astonished cheeks. She measured her distance from the ardent Hebrew unconscious of his danger, but still she paused for greater certainty. Did the diamond mean another proposition—or was it maybe a proposal this time?
"I got my uncle in jail in Napoli," she said very quietly.
"I'm sorry," he answered simply. "But what of it? They had my brother Steve in Pontiac once."
"My uncle he killed the man that spoilt his daughter."
"That ain't nothing to be ashamed of, Aggie," he spoke kindly, seeking to console her, and took her small and stubby hand gently in his long sinewy ones; "he done right."
She never let him know, for her dignity, how low she once had feared he held her, and she kissed him goodnight many times.
"They say you people are good to their women, Moxey," she whispered. "Ours ain't, always." She paused. "Gee, my pa'll have a fit."
Moxey laughed. "Mine too, I guess," said he, "but we won't have to ask them for nothing, understand."
"You'll stand up with me, won't you?" Moxey asked, a bit anxiously.
"Sure, of course," said Al.
"It's at night, and"—here was to be at least one wedding where the groom was no lay figure—"dress suits de rigger, understand."
"Sure, of course," Al assented impatiently. Did Moxey think he didn't know anything?
"We ain't going to tell the old folks for a couple of weeks to save hard feelings on both sides, that's our motto. And the kids is to be Catholics, she stood pat on that."
"Sure, of course, what did you expect 'em to be, kikes?" Perhaps Al spoke a trifle too explicitly, for Moxey flushed as he frequently did. It was his last remaining signal to the world that his hide wasn't as tough as he pretended.
"I ain't marr'in' her just because she's a peach," Moxey rhapsodized, "but she is. Wait till you see her and I'll leave it to you. But she's got principle, too. Her uncle killed a fellow for wronging his daughter and Aggie says he done right, if he is still doing time in the old country. Oh, there's plenty of principle in dagoes, you can say what you like. When you go foolin' around their women you gotta take a chance."
It was as if Moxey had pressed a bell in his friend's mind and opened a chamber there, where vague shapes appeared and suspicion had been gathering. For Al had observed Georgia's mysteries and evasions, her care before her mirror, her new hats and pretty ribbons, her day-long Sunday absences. Twice he had met her on the street, walking and chatting most gayly with some strange man. Besides his mother had plainly hinted that all might not be right.
"What do you think a fellow ought to do if a man's after his sister?" Al asked slowly. "This unwritten law thing don't seem to work any more except down South."
"You can't lay down no rule," said Moxey. "Depends on if you like your sister."
"If you do?"
"Then go the limit and take a chance with your jury." He paused and great shame came to his cheeks again. "I had a sister, oncet ... and she, well y' understand.... I sometimes thought I oughta of killed him ... but I never did ... I kept askin' myself 'what's the good of killing him now? Becky's done for anyhow, and it'd just do for me, too.' ... The time to look out for a girl is beforehand, not afterwards."
There was no doubt about that, especially in theory. But Al contemplated somewhat dubiously the task of safeguarding Georgia. She was so blamed independent. She might say he was impertinent, or she might just laugh at him. She was fairly certain, at all events, not to acquiesce readily in any watch and ward policy which he might seek to institute for her benefit. Still—in a well conducted family the men were supposed to look out for the women and keep the breath of dishonor from them. He was the man of the family now, if he was only eighteen, and so it was up to him to find out if Georgia was in danger, and if she was, to get her out of itbeforehand.
"I seen your sister once," remarked Moxey, guessing his thoughts.
Al was silent.
"Looked like she could take care of herself."
"Oh, she's got good sense," said Al, "but you know the riddle, 'Why's a woman like a ship? Because it takes a man to manage her.'"
"Yes," assented Moxey, "and they have more respect, understand, for the fellow who can say no to 'em when it's right."
So after supper that evening, instead of going over to the pool parlor, Al stayed at home waiting for his mother to go to bed, when he could have a talk with Georgia and pump her and find out about this strange man she knew, and if necessary sayno.
His mother drew up to the lamp and darned his socks and talked and talked on endlessly it seemed to him. He felt a little abused when nine o'clock came, which was her bed time, and still she made no move to go.
She did get a little tiresome at times. He would acknowledge that frankly to himself, though he would not let her see it for worlds—except by staying away from her most of the time, and not paying attention to her when he was with her.
If his most affectionate greeting of the day came as a rule when he said "Good night, mother dear," he didn't realize it; and it would have amazed him to know that sometimes she sniffled for as much as half an hour after she went to bed, because he had shown so plainly that he was glad to be rid of her. She supposed in her sadness that he was an unnatural, almost unparalleled example of unfilial ingratitude; not suspecting he was only a rear rank file in the Ever Victorious Army of Youth.
Al wound his watch. "Gee, quarter of ten," he remarked, through a yawn. He stretched himself elaborately. Mother was certainly delaying the game. Until she went he couldn't have his round-up with Georgia, who was in one of her after-supper reading spells and had hardly said a word all evening.
She now had a fad for those little books bound in imitation green leather that constituted the World's Epitome of Culture series and cost thirty-five cents apiece, or two magazines and an extra Sunday paper, as she put it.
She had been through twenty of them already and was now on her twenty-first. He didn't deny that it was creditable to go in for culture. If that was the sort of thing she liked, why, as the fellow says, he supposed she liked that sort of thing. It's a free country. But as for him, when he was tired with the day's work, he thought he was entitled to a little recreation—a game of pool, a couple of glasses of beer, maybe a swim in a "nat"—he wasn't bad at the middle distances—and he couldn't see drawing up a chair under a lamp and going to work again, for that was what it amounted to, on a little green Epitome that you had to study over to get the meaning, or maybe look in the dictionary, as she was doing now. She had told him that they were more interesting than the other kind of books and had even got him to start on a couple she said he was sure to like, because they were so exciting—Marco Polo's Travels and Froissart's Chronicles—but they didn't excite him any, and he made only about thirty pages in each of them.
Indeed, it was his private opinion that Georgia was more or less bunking herself with this upward and onward stuff. She fell for it because it helped her feel superior. And then she worked herself up to believing she really liked it because people were surprised she knew so much and said she had a naturally fine mind. A vicious circle.
In all of which cogitations he was perhaps not entirely astray; though her chief incitement was more concrete than he supposed. She wanted to impress Stevens in particular, rather than people in general—she was determined to keep even with him so that he could never talk down to her as to a mere "womanly woman" who held him by sex and nothing more.
When at last Mrs. Talbot arose, Al hastened to her, kissed her affectionately, slipped his arm around her, impelled her towards the door, opened it rapidly, kissed her again, closed it firmly behind her, lit a cigarette, and began: "Georgia, I want to have a heart to heart with you."
"In a second." She read the last half page of her chapter so rapidly that she was compelled to read it over again for conscience' sake, then inserted her book-mark and turned to him: "Fire away."
"Who's the mysterious stranger!"
She had known it was coming for the last half hour. From the corner of her eye, she had spied the importance of the occasion actually oozing out of young Al. At first she thought of side-stepping the interview, but eventually decided not to, partly to please the lad and more still to hear how her case would stand when discussed aloud. She had been in a most chaotic state of mind ever since the agreement with Stevens to pretend; that which wasn't clear then was hazier now; she was of ten minds a day whether to give in to her lover or to give in to the Church. Now she would listen to Georgia and Al talk about the case as if they were two other people, in the hope of finding guidance in her eavesdropping.
"He is a man in the office whom I like," she answered.
"How much?"
"A lot."
"And he does, too?"
"Yes, a lot."
"Hmm—you know I hate to preach, but—" Hesitation.
"You think you will, all the same. Go on, I'm listening."
"You know I'm liberal. If you were just fooling with this fellow, I'd never peep, honest, I wouldn't."
She smiled, "I'll promise to only fool with my next beau."
"Now, this is no laughing matter," he rebuked her levity. "If you're really—stuck on each other—it may bust you all to pieces before you're done with it—unless you quit in time."
"What do you mean by 'quit'?"
"Give up seeing him altogether. It would be safer."
"Yes, so it would. But what's that got to do with it?"
"A woman can't afford to take chances," he retorted impressively.
"It seems to me the people who get the most fun out of life are the ones who do take chances. Your little tin hero, Roosevelt, for instance—you like him because he'd rather hunt a lion or a trust than a sure thing. Jim Horan didn't eat smoke for the money in it, but because he thought a wall might fall on him some day—or might not. That's what he wanted to find out. Well, perhaps I want to find out if a wall will fall on me some day—or not."
Al was astounded. There was something more than bold, something hardly decent in the comparison of her own dubious flirtation to a great fireman's martyrdom or a soldier-statesman-sportsman's courage and career.
"But, Georgia," he expostulated, "you speak like a man in a manhole. Horan and Roosevelt did their duty taking chances."
"Rubbish," she said. "They acted according to their natures and I will act according to mine—some day."
He looked unutterably distressed, for he loved her, and foresaw ruin enfolding her. He knew that women aren't allowed to act according to their natures, if their natures are as natural as all that.
"I haven't seen Jim for over a year," she went on, "nor heard of him for ten months. He may be dead. He is the same as dead to me. My heart is the heart of a widow—grateful for her weeds. The Church may say otherwise—and I might obey unwillingly—but my own being tells me that there is nothing wrong in my love for Mason Stevens—any more than it's sin to breathe air or drink water. That's how we're made. When I lived with Jim, I played no tricks. But that's over now, it's over for good. What's the difference whether he's under the sod or above it, so far as I'm concerned?" Her eyes were alight and she walked back and forth, gesticulating like a Beveridge, persuading herself that what she wished was just because she wished it. "I've got a few good years of youth left. I'll not throw them away for a religious quibble."
"You mean divorce and marry again—openly!"
"What does the ceremony matter? I'm not sure we'd take the trouble of going through it," she shrugged her shoulders, "the Church says that it means nothing anyway; that it makes the sin no less."
"But, Georgia," he was beginning now to fear for her common sense, "for God's sake, if you do such a thing, first go through the civil form anyway."
She laughed triumphantly. She had caught him. "There spoke your heart. Of course, we'll have a legal marriage. You see the Church hasn't convinced you, either, that divorce and remarriage is the same as adultery."
She had crystallized her vague desires into positive determination by the daring sound of her own words.
Al reflected moodily that arguing with a woman never gets you anything. If he had been trying to interest Georgia in a vacuum cleaner, he would have known better than to start in by arousing her to a fervor for brooms. Now he would have to wait a few days until she had cooled out, and then try her on a different tack, appealing to her affection and begging her not to bring disgrace upon the whole family.
She was half-sitting, half-kneeling on the window seat, her elbows on the sill, her cheeks in her hands, looking out into the dim urban night. Directly to the south, over the loop, where Chicago was wide awake and playing, the diffused electric radiance was brightest and highest—a man-made borealis.
She took pride in her big city. It was unafraid. It followed no rules but its own, and didn't always follow them. It owned the future in fee and pitied the past. It said, not "Ought I?" but "I will." It was modern, just as she was modern. She was more characteristically the offspring of her city than of her mother. For she was new, like Chicago; and her mother was old, like the Church.
So she pondered in the pleasant after-glow of decision, buttressing her resolve.
The bell rang from the vestibule below and she went to the speaking tube to find out what was wanted. "Yes?" she inquired, then without saying anything more she walked slowly to her room.
"Who was it!" asked Al, but she closed the door behind her without answering. Funny things, women. He went to the tube himself.
"What you want?"
"It's Jim."
"Jim?—well, for the love of goodness godness Agnes—d'you want to come up?"
"Yes, if it's all right."
Al pressed the door-opener, but before climbing the stairs Jim shouted another question through the tube: "Wasn't that Georgia who spoke first?"
"Yes."
"Well, why did she—how is she, anyway!"
"Fine. Come along."
There was a great change in Jim. He must have taken off forty or fifty pounds. His eyes were clear, his skin healthily brown, and he had hardened up all over. He looked a good ten years younger than the last time Al saw him, except for one thing, that his hair had thinned out a great deal. He was almost bald on top.
They shook hands and Jim gave him a solid grip. "Cheese," said the younger fellow heartily, "you look good—primed for a battle, almost." He put his fingers on the other's biceps.
Jim drew up his clenched fist, showing a very respectable bunch of muscle. "More than there ever used to be, eh?" he asked, smiling broadly.
Al whistled, stepped back for a better look at the miracle, and whistled. "And yet they say they never come back. Hm-m-m—how'd you do it?"
"Working. Rousty on a dredge in Oklahoma."
"Rousty?"
"Toted coal to the firemen, later got to firing myself—on the night shift. We kept her going steady. Funny thing, irrigating way out there, t'hell an' gone, in the middle of the frogs barking and the cattle bawling feeding your old thirty-horse and watching the old scoop lifting out her yard of sludge every six minutes. You got so it seemed the most natural thing in the world, but it ain't, is it!"
"What'd they pay!"
"Fifty and board. But the money's being in the business. Me and our day trainman was talking of getting shares in a dredge. There's work there for a thousand years. Where's Georgia?"
Al nodded his head toward her door.
"So's not to see me!"
Al nodded.
"I came clear from there in the busy season for the sight of her and I didn't come alone. I've three hundred here," said Jim, taking a roll of bills from his pocket. "And to be turned down this way, with my heart full of love——" He was greatly moved and he showed it, for his lip trembled and his voice shook.
Al was sorry for him. "Aw, she'll come around. She's got a stubborn streak, you know that, but she does right in the end. Give her time. I'll talk to her."
Jim felt sure that she must have heard their conversation, especially the last part of it, for he had talked quite distinctly and he remembered from the old days how readily all the sounds in the flat penetrated into that room. He got on his hands and knees and looked at the crack beneath her door to see if her room was lighted.
"She's sitting in the dark," he whispered, "Would it be all right to knock!"
"I don't know," said Al uncertainly.
Jim knocked softly, then a little more loudly, but there was no answer. He put his ear to the door to listen, then tip-toed away.
"She's crying," he whispered to Al, "crying to beat the band. Those heavy deep kind of sobs. I could barely hear her. Must have her face in the pillow. Now what do you know about that!"
"That's a good sign," said Al, "means she's coming around. When she just turns white and don't speak——"
Jim privately opined that he understood Georgia's moods vastly better than Al ever would, and was in no need of instruction on this subject.
"You mean when she has one of her silences," he said, giving the thing its proper name.
"Yes, that's when you can't handle her. But now, she's begun to melt already. So to-morrow evening come for supper, and I bet my shirt you are all made up in thirty minutes."
Jim wrung his hand. "You're a thoroughbred, Al—and take this from me now, I've learned sense. If I get her back, I'll keep her. No more booze, never one drop."
He counted out four five-dollar bills upon the center table. "That's what I borrowed, when I quit," he explained. As he reached the door he turned to confirm his happy appointment. "Six thirty to-morrow evening?"
The following morning brother and sister rode down-town together in the cars. "Don't you think you might have consulted me before asking Jim to supper?" she inquired.
"Don't be foolish," he replied cheerfully, "you were locked in your room."
She worked all day in that state of suppressed excitement which presages great events, from the first ride on the lodge goat to the codicil part of uncle's will. Everything she saw or touched was more vivid than usual to her senses. Her typewriter keys seemed picked out in the air against a deep perspective, their lettering very heavy, their clicking singularly loud. One of the little flags caught in a ventilation grill, and instead of fluttering out freely, flapped and bellied, making a small snapping noise. A flag wasn't meant to do that, so she crossed the big room, pulled up a chair and released it, somewhat to the surprise of the youth sitting directly beneath it.
The old man, usually rapid enough with his letters, seemed hopelessly slow and awkward this morning, and she had to bite her tongue to keep from helping him out with the proper word when he got stuck. He was leaning back in his swivel chair, wasting interminable time with pauses and laryngeal interjections, the tips of his fingers together, his eyes half closed, droning out his sentences. He wore a little butterfly tie, to-day, blue spots on brown, just below his active Adam's apple and thin, corded neck. Under the point of his chin was a little patch which his razor had skipped, hopelessly white. She wondered what could be in it for him any more, and why he didn't retire.
She rattled off her letters, then added a note for Stevens, "Dinner to-night?" and left it in the S compartment of theLetters Receivedbox.
When he came in later for his afternoon mail he caught her eye and nodded, and on the way out of the old man's office stopped at her desk for a few hasty words: "What time, and where?"
"Wherever you like—at six thirty."
"Max's?" he suggested, "we'll have snails."
"Oh, what a perfectly dear place—in every sense of the word."
"My treat," he said.
"No."
"You never dined with me before; you might let me celebrate.
"We'll celebrate anyway, Dutch. Make it Max's."
He didn't prolong the argument. They had long before made a compact that the expenses of their expeditions should be shared.
"I suppose," he inquired, "your six thirty really means seven. I've an appointment, might keep me till then, unless——"
"I'll meet you on the stroke of half-past," she said, and was as good as her word.
They had snailsà la Max, whereof the frame is finer than the picture, as well as Maxian frogs' legs, boned and wrapped in lettuce leaves, and, not without misgivings, a bottle of claret.
Stevens, unaware that it was their last time of pretending, abided by the rules. They talked shop and shows and vacations. Georgia slipped in a few appropriate words concerning her cultural progress. They were both somewhat severe upon the orchestra, because there was too much noise to the music, so Mason beckoned the head waiter and "requested" the barcarole fromTales of Hoffman, and they floated off in it toward the edge of what they knew.
It is said that most people have at least two personalities. In this respect Georgia was like them. One side of her was the woman of 1850, and the times previous; whether mother, wife, daughter, maiden or mistress, primarily something in relation to man, her individuality submerged in this relationship, as a soldier's individuality is submerged in his uniform.
The other aspect of Georgia's nature was that of the "new woman," the women hoped for in 1950. Bold, determined, taught to think, relentless in defense of her own personality, insistent that men shall have less and she shall have more sexual freedom, she is first of all herself and only next to that, something to a man.
When the woman of 1850 managed to get in a word about Jim and his fruitless wait at home, the woman of 1950 answered, "Shall you now be absurd enough to leave the man you love for one you hate?"
"Shall we take in a show?" he suggested when they had finished their coffee.
"I believe I'd rather walk home."
"Why, it's five miles." He was somewhat disconcerted by her energy, for he was distinctly let down, in reaction from his day's work, and his afternoon's excitement of looking forward to an unusual meeting with her, which had turned out after all to be more than commonly placid.
"Five miles—and a heavenly night. The first of spring. Come, brace up."
"You must be feeling pretty strong."
"No," she said, "I am getting a bit headachy, I want some air, to get out of four walls and merge into the darkness—if you know what I mean."
"You're not going to be sick?" he asked concernedly.
"O, no—it's just a touch of spring fever, I imagine."
There is a cement path with a sloping concrete breakwater which winds between Lake Michigan on one side and Lincoln Park on the other for a distance of several miles. Here come the people in endless procession from morning until midnight, two by two, male and female, walking slow and talking low, permeated by the souls of children begging life.
It is a chamber of Maeterlinck's azure palace of the unborn.
Presently, by good luck, Georgia and her lover came upon a bench just as another couple was quitting it—the supply of benches being inadequate to the demands of pleasant evenings in spring. The departing two passed, one around each end of the seat, and walked rapidly, several feet apart, across the strip of lawn and bridal path beyond. They were delayed at the curb by the stream of automobiles and stood out in clear relief against the passing headlights.
It was evident they had been quarreling, for the man looked sullen and the woman, half turned away, shrugged her shoulders to what he was saying.
Georgia had been watching them. "Too bad," said she, "they're having a row."
"Perhaps they're not meant for each other."
"Everyone quarrels sometimes," she answered, "meant or not."
"Do you think we would, if——"
"I'm sure of it," she replied sharply. "We're human beings, not angels."
There was doubtless common sense in what she said, but nevertheless it delighted him not. He wished that she could in such moments as these, yield herself fully to the illusion which possessed him that their life together would be one sempiternal climax of joy.
"I honestly believe," he asserted solemnly, "that sometimes two natures are so perfectly adjusted that there is no friction between them."
"Rubbish," she replied, quoting a newly read Shaw preface, "people aren't meant to stew in love from the cradle to the grave."
She couldn't understand her own mood. She had arranged this evening with Stevens to tell him that she was ready to marry him, and she found herself unable to. Her conscious purpose was the same as ever.
Yet as often as she summoned herself to look the look or keep the silence which would put in train his declaration, it seemed as if she received from her depths a sudden and imperative mandate against it.
It was her long silence while she was pondering over these strange things which gave him a false cue and he entered to the center of her consciousness.
"This wasting of ourselves must go on until he dies?"
"The only way out is death," she said slowly, "or apostasy."
"Apostasy!" The word had an ugly sound even for him.
"I know one woman who did it for love of a man."
"And she is happy?"
Georgia did not answer at once.
"And she is happy," he repeated seriously, as if much depended on the question, "or not?"
"She says she is," she answered, "but I don't think so. She doesn't look happy—about the eyes—one notices those things. She seems changed—and—reckless and—and she's not always been faithful to her husband. I found it out."
"You found it out!"
"Yes, she asked me to go to a dinner party. Her husband was away from town—there were four of us—and I could tell what it meant. She wanted me to do what she was doing—and we had been friends so long—we took our first communion together."
"Georgia," he asked, chilled through with fright, "do you often have that sort of thing put in your way?"
"I have plenty of chances to make a mess of life," she replied, "every woman does, who's passable looking, especially downtown women."
"Dearest heart," he begged, "I can't go on thinking of that the rest of my life. Marry me and let me shield and shelter you from all this——"
"This what?"
"Temptation," he blurted, "and rotten, unwomanly down-town life. A woman ought to be taken care of, in her own home, by the man who loves her and respects and honors her."
Georgia smiled. "Do you know," she asked, "that's almost exactly word for word the way he talked to this friend of mine and persuaded her to get her divorce and leave the Church and marry him—almost word for word—she told me about it at the time. And now she's—fooling him. It didn't shield her from temptation."
"But I have known people to be divorced and marry again and live perfectly happy and respectable lives."
"Protestants—weren't they?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Ah, that's the point. They do what they think is right, but a Catholic does what she knows is wrong, and begins her new marriage in a wilful sin, so what can grow from it but more sin?"
Her voice, naturally full and resonant like a trained speaker's, was thin and uncertain as she told of the apostate. Her other self, the woman of the past, was ascendant, but she fought against what she conceived to be a momentary weakness, and forced her resolution as a skillful rider forces an unwilling horse over a jump. "But if you want me," she said in words that trembled, "you can have me."
"If I want you——" He took her in his arms and kissed her.
It seemed to her definitely in that instant that nothing could ever be quite the same with her again, that a certain fine purity had passed from her forever and she must live thereafter on a lower plane.
All the modernistic teachings, books, lectures, pamphlets with which she had in recent years packed her head, on woman's right to selfhood, parasitic females, prostitution in marriage, endowed motherhood, sexual slavery; and all the practical philosophy of the success school which she had learned from years of contact with money-makers, that life is more for the daring than for the good, were washed away by the earlier-formed and deeper-lying impressions of her youth.
She was aware of a fleeting return of her virginal feeling that to give herself to one man was humbleness sufficient for a lifetime; but to give herself to two would be the permanent lowering of pride.
But she felt that for her the moving finger had writ and passed. There could be no more going back or shadow of turning. Henceforth, for good or evil, she belonged to this man.
She yielded to his kisses, as many as he wished, in passive submission.
"You will always be good to me—promise that, promise me, dear," she begged, "because if you're not I'll——" Her voice choked and two tears rolled down her cheeks. Gone was her freedom and her pride. She spoke, not as her ideal had been, partner speaking to partner on even terms, but as a servant to her master, asking not justice but mercy.
Her solitary happiness in this hour was the feeling that the man was the stronger, that despite his greenness and awkwardness and the ease with which she had hitherto controlled him, fundamentally his nature was bigger than hers and that she was compelled to follow him. In her new feebleness she rejoiced that she sinned not boldly and resolutely, but because she had been taken in the traditional manner by the overpowering male.
"I have been looking forward to this for longer than you suspect," said she, "and now that it's come, I feel as if I were at a play watching it happen to some one else."
He put his hand on her shoulder, then quickly turned her white face to his. "Why, what is the matter?" he asked. "You are shaking like a leaf."
"I think I'd better go home. It is damp and cold sitting here." After they had gone a few steps, she said, with a weak little laugh, "I've lost my enthusiasm for walking. Put me on the car."
He began to be thoroughly frightened. "Don't worry, dear," she reassured him. "Nothing can change us now. We belong to each other—for keeps."
They said little to each other in the brightly lighted street car. She sat slightly crumpled, her shoulders rounded, swaying to the stops and starts. She breathed slowly through her lips, and her eyes had the strange wide-open look of a young bird's, when you hold it in your hands. And he, but partly understanding, yearned for her helplessly, and covenanted with his nameless gods that no sorrow should ever come to her from him.
She hung to his arm as they walked up the half-lighted street where she lived, between rows of three, four and five story flat buildings full of drama. Outside her own she stopped and looked up to her windows. They were brightly lighted.
Instead of using her key, she rang the bell to her apartment. She heard Al's voice in answer.
"Is Jim there?" she asked.
"Yes."
She turned to Stevens with a flash of her old positiveness.
"I must go somewhere else. And I don't feel like telling my troubles to any friend to-night. So will you take me to a hotel?"
They returned to the car line by an unusual street, lest Al should come looking after her, she driving her sick frame along by sheer will, her lover resolved that if need be he would save her from herself.
She waited while he engaged her room, and when he came bringing her key, he said, "I have put you down as Miss Talbot."
"Oh, you were nice to think of that. I like to imagine sometimes it still is so." She took his hand. "Good night, dear," she whispered. "I will be a true wife to you."
Stevens called up Georgia's room in the morning to ask how she had slept and she reported, "Well—that is, pretty well," which wasn't true, for she had tossed wretchedly through the night. By careful brushing and buying a shirtwaist she managed to measurably freshen her appearance, though she reached the office with tired eyes and hectic splotches beneath her eyes. Al was there before her waiting with white face.
"Georgia," he began miserably, "I've been hunting the town for you. Where have you been?"
"Alone."
"You've frightened us half to death. Mother's sick over it."
"You can have Jim in the house, or me, but not both of us."
She would give him no more satisfaction, and he was turning away angry at her obstinacy, when Mason came up to greet her.
"Good morning."
"Good morning."
Al quickly divined that here was the man. It was written in the way he looked at her, and in Georgia's sudden sidelong glance at Al to see if he saw.
"I'd like a word with you," said the brother to the lover, tapping him on the shoulder with studied rudeness, "now."
Stevens didn't understand the situation, but he was properly resentful, and lowered at the stranger. In these subtle days of commerce, finger-tips on collar bones may convey all that was once meant by a glove in the face.
"My brother, Mr. Stevens," she explained. They did not shake hands. Mason was not quite sure from the young fellow's expression just what might happen, but he was sure it had better not happen right there. "Let's get out of the office—and you can have as many words as you want," said he. Georgia arose to go with them.
"No, don't you come," said Stevens.
"I think perhaps it would be better."
"But it wouldn't. You stay here," the man answered with great positiveness. She sank obediently in the chair, to the disgusted amazement of her brother, and let them go alone.
"Were you out with her last night?"
"Yes."
The lad sunk his hand to his coat pocket, his wild young brain aflame with violence and romance and vengeance and the memory of Moxey's sweetheart's uncle who had slain the despoiler of his home. Stevens was near death and he knew it, but he never batted an eye as Al reported later to Moxey.
"I knew it damned well. She said she was alone." His hand tightened on the automatic, pressing down the safety lock, and he pointed the gun, so that he could shoot through his pocket and kill.
"She was, after eleven. I left her then."
"Prove it. You've got to," insultingly.
"Go look at the hotel register, for the name of Miss Georgia Talbot."
Al grunted. Here was a concrete fact—subject to verification, yes or no. "All right," he vouchsafed curtly, "if it turns out that way—but one more thing—keep away from her after this altogether—understand." Al shot out his jaw and swung around his pocket with the barrel pointing straight at Stevens' middle. He looked just then a good deal like a young tough delivering a serious threat, which he was.
Stevens shoved his derby hat back and laughed. "If you think you can run me around with the pop-gun, guess again. I'm going to marry Georgia and you're coming to the wedding," he stepped right up to the gun and tapped Al sharply on the shoulder, "understand."
It was perhaps a chancy thing to do, for the lad had worked himself into a state of self-righteous anger, and his vanity was savagely exulted by the sensation of putting it over on a full-grown man to his face. But Stevens had acted instinctively as he frequently did in stressful moment and his instinct played him true this time.
"She ain't allowed to marry again, so you keep off the grass," he answered loudly, but his voice broke and shot up an octave as he took his hand from his pocket to clench his fist and shake it in the other's face.
Whereat Stevens knew he had him and answered quietly in his most matter-of-fact business tones, "That's for her to say—and she's said it." He smiled. "You know she's free, white, and twenty-one."
Al, not sure just what his next step ought to be, walked away, probably to consult with Moxey, muttering as he went, "Well, remember I warned you."
Stevens returned to the office and explained the incident briefly to Georgia, "Oh, the kid was excited at first, but I reassured him." While they were talking the old man rang her buzzer and asked her to have Mr. Stevens come in.
A dark, beaked, heavy-browed, much-dressed gentleman was in the old man's office, introduced to Mason as Mr. Silverman.
Mr. Silverman deserves a paragraph or two. He was said to be a Polish, a Russian or a Spanish Jew, but nobody knew for sure or dared ask him, for he didn't like it. At sixteen or thereabouts, he came to the company as an office boy, and in two months was indispensable. At thirty-seven, owing partly to the conscientious performance of his duties and more to his earnestness in pulling feet from the rungs above him, and stamping fingers from the rungs below, he was elected to a position especially created for him, to-wit, Executive Secretary to the President of The Eastern Life Insurance Company of New York, which gave him everything to say about the running of it except the very last word.
Perhaps once a quarter he was reversed, and always on some extremely important matter involving the investment of funds. This galled him beyond measure, but he kept it to himself.
At the last annual election, he would have presented himself as a candidate for president, or at least for first vice-president with power to act, but after sizing up the way the proxies were running for the new directorate, he knew that crowd would never stand for him, so he squelched his own boom for the time being, and waited. The title was re-conferred for the fifteenth time upon a charming but delicate plutocrat of the fourth generation of New Yorkers, who was compelled to spend his term health-hunting in European spas, where Mr. Silverman took delight in sending him for decision a copious stream of unimportant but vexatiously technical questions, which much disturbed the invalid's serenity, for he had entered the company at the top, and didn't know detail. Mr. Silverman himself settled the more important matters, inasmuch as there wasn't time to send to Europe and wait for an answer. Whenever he reached for a stronger hold, he had an incontrovertible excuse, and he got to know Mr. Morgan personally.
He was stocky, with ample room for his digestion, and like most fighting men, he had a good thick neck that carried plenty of blood to his head. His unpleasantest trait was his shame of race, and his most agreeable one an understanding love of music. His only exercise was strong black cigars, and everyone on the company's payroll dreaded his seemingly preternatural knowledge of what was going on.
"Mr. Stevens," said he, "sit down. I have heard of you." Then to allow that pregnant remark to sink in he turned to Georgia. "Take this, please: 'Mr. W. F. Plaisted, General Agent in charge S. W. Division, Eastern Life Insurance Company, Kansas City, Mo. Dear Sir: Please furnish the bearer, Mr. Mason Stevens, with whatever information he desires. He is my personal representative. With kind regards, Yours truly, Executive Secretary to the President.'
"That is all." He nodded to Georgia, and she departed. The old man pussy-footed after her, leaving the other two together in his private office.
"You are to take the nine o'clock train to-night for Kansas City to prepare a report for me on why we aren't getting more business in the town and our competitors less. Here are some letters from New York to certain banks there which will admit you to their confidence. Find out all you can about Plaisted and his office before you go to him. Send me a night letter to my hotel every night as to your progress. Use this code." He took a typewritten sheet of synonyms from his pocket. "Should you cross the trail of another investigator for the Eastern, you are not to reveal yourself to him. This point you are to bear in mind." He paused for an answer.
"Yes, sir," said Stevens.
"Your expense money will be liberal; and mind, no talk—not even a hint to your best girl. I suppose, of course, there is one." Mason smiled, but did not answer. "I am told you are not married."
"No, sir."
"Perhaps it is just as well. Women are to live with, not to travel with, and you're still traveling." Mr. Silverman lit a fifty-center, and then, being a natural-born commander, topped off his instructions with hopes of loot. "Good luck, young man. You're shaking hands with your future on this trip."
Mason came from the interview consecrated to the task of getting the goods on Plaisted. Going after him was like going after ivory in Africa. Landing a prospect was as tame relatively as plugging ducks on the Illinois River. For Plaisted had been a big man in the company in his day, though getting a little old now. With solid connections through Missouri, Kansas and the Southwest, if he fell, he'd fall with a smash.
Mason rather fancied that in company politics he could see as far through a grindstone as his neighbor, if it had a hole in it. He knew that there was a hidden but bitter fight for control of the business between the old New York society crowd who had inherited it, and the younger abler men, under the leadership of Silverman, who had grown up from the ranks. He knew that his own boss, the old man, lined up with Silverman, but that Plaisted had delivered the south-western proxies in a solid block, for the New York ticket. He therefore inferred that Silverman didn't feel strong enough to remove Plaisted without a pretty plausible reason and that he was being sent to Kansas City to find the reason; and failing that, to make one, which, as it turned out, was precisely what he did.
He set out on his mission with as little compunction as a soldier who had received orders to shoot to kill. For, as he told himself, surely Plaisted had also pulled down men in his time. Life is a battle. Therefore is it not well to be with the conqueror and share in the cut?
If he could now make good with Silverman, and, more especially, convince him that he was a live one who would keep on making good, the Jew would certainly recognize him in the reorganization. He had visions of tooling along the macadam in his Panno Six to a vined house in the suburbs, hidden by tall trees, where, in a trailing gown, Georgia would walk through her flowers to meet him, with a small hand clinging to each of hers.
Plaisted had now become, to all intents and purposes, his competitor; and going after your competitors is the life of trade. As for Mrs. Plaisted—if there was one—who was she against Georgia?
He expected to be gone several weeks, so Georgia telephoned the janitor to tell mama that she would stay down for dinner, again, but would be home soon afterwards. Mason took her to the top of a tall building, where there was a sixty cent table d'hote. The topic, of course, was his forthcoming trip from routine to adventure and its probable effect upon their fortunes.
For all the wise saws about not talking to women, one may hardly dine with his fiancée of a day without mention of the marvelous opportunity which dropped before one that morning as from the skies. Especially if she is in the same business and heard it drop.
So, little by little, one thing leading to another, he told her everything he knew or guessed or hoped. He did not once forget Silverman's injunction to silence, as he babbled on. It stuck in his mind like a thorn in the foot; and, telling himself he was a fool to talk, he talked. The precise moment didn't seem to come when he could frankly say, without offense, "Georgia, that part of it is a secret." And he didn't see how to temporize widely, for it had become physically impossible for him to lie to her, though, of course, he retained the use of his faculties for commerce with others.
So he passed on the ever heavy load of silence, hoping that she could hold her tongue if he couldn't. It was as much her affair as his anyway, so he felt, and if by her indiscretion she should cut him out of Silverman's confidence and future big things, she would in the same motion cut herself out of a Panno Six and a house in the trees and a richer circle of friends.
But, inasmuch as she was a case-hardened private secretary, she kept her faith with him in this thing at least. If he never has a Panno Six it wasn't her fault.
The most surprising thing to her in his narrative was that it did not more greatly interest her. It seemed to her a far-off affair, impersonal, like something she was reading in the papers. Stevens seemed to stand outside her area of life, which had become narrow and curiously uneasy, heavy with a future in which he was not concerned.
At first he attributed the listlessness, which she tried to conceal but could not, to one of the widely advertised feminine moods, and he tried his best to divert her not merely with pictures of their future, blissful and automobileful, but also with quips and cranks and wanton wiles. No go.
So when course VI of the table d'hote—nuts and pecans, three of each to the order—was ended, he suggested that perhaps she would better go directly home instead of waiting downtown with him until his train went. She acquiesced. They walked to the "L" in silence.
Imagine the chagrin of a knight riding off to the bloody wars from a ladye who didn't care if he never came back. That was how it struck him. She took his arm to climb the steep iron stairs, and at the top stopped a moment to get her breath.
"Dear heart," she said, "don't have all those awful thoughts about me—don't you suppose I know what you're thinking? I've been dull to-night, but my head is simply splitting. I believe I'm in for the grip."
He looked at his watch. "I'm sure I can take you home and get back in time."
"Bather than have you risk it, I'll stay down until your train goes."
"Promise me then to get a doctor and go right to bed."
"I'll go right to bed—I can barely hold my head up, and I'll get a doctor in the morning if I'm not better."
There were only two or three other people on the long platform, so he kissed her good-bye. Then the screened iron gate was slapped to behind her, the guard jerked his cord, she smiled weakly and waved her hand back at him, and it was all over for a much longer time than he had any idea of.
He watched her train until the tail lights turned the loop, then said "Hell," lit a cigar, pushed his hat back, sighed and went to check his trunk.
He sat up in the smoking compartment gassing with drummers until the last of them turned in, sympathized for awhile with the Pullman porter, who suffered volubly as soon as Mason gave him permission to. He had been married that very afternoon and now he was off to Los Angeles and back, a ten-day journey, leaving behind him as a dark and shining mark for those who realized the devilishness of his itinerary an unprotected, young, gay-hearted bride. He appreciated the snares that would be set for her by his brothers of brush and berth. He'd been a bachelor himself. "Yas, sah, railroadin' is sure one yalla dawg's life for a fambly man."
Stevens lay awake a long time that night thinking of the future, and Georgia lay awake a long time considering the past. She felt hot and thirsty; three or four times she got out of bed and ran the faucet until the water was cold and bathed her face and drank.
After she had left Stevens she had taken a cross seat in the car facing homeward, and, placing her burning cheek against the window for coolness, had dozed off for many stations. When she awoke with a start at the one beyond her own, her personality had slipped to its earlier center as definitely as when a clutch slips from high to second speed.
It is said that the last step gained by the individual or the race is the first step lost, in sickness, age and fear. So Georgia's illness began its attack on the topmost layer of her character, that part of it which had been built in the recent years. She was driven, as it were, to a lower floor of her own edifice and no longed saw so wide a view.
Her pride and self-will crumbled—for the sick aren't proud—and her modernity trickled away. After all, was it not more peaceful to do what people thought you ought to, than to fight them constantly for your own way? Life was too short and human nature too weak for the stress and strain of such ceaseless resistance as she had made in the past few years against her family, the friends of her family, and the Church. For God's sake let her now have peace.
Yes, for God's sake. The words had come irreverently to her mind. But after all, could she or anyone else have peace except from God? and was there any other gift as sweet?
She knew there was one sure anodyne for her troubled spirit, and only one—the confessional. She had kept away too long already, for more than two years. She would go to-morrow, or perhaps the next day, and wash her soul clean. Father Hervey would talk to her as if to rip her heart strings out, but in the end he would leave her with peace, after she had promised and vowed to give up her mortal sin. Poor Mason, that meant him. She wept a few weak tears, then dried her eyes on the corner of the sheet.
So this was to be the end of her spiritual adventuring, the end of the free expression of her free being, and selfhood, and all those other valorous things she had rejoiced in.
She wasn't able any longer to go on with it. She must desert the army of women in the day of battle, the army led by Curie, Key, Pankhurst, Schreiner, Addams, Gilman, and cross over to the adversary, the encompassing Church. It would absorb her into its vast unity as a drop disappears in the sea. It would think for her and will for her. She would be animated with its life, not her own; but it would suffuse her with the comfort that is past understanding. She would eat the lotus and submit. She was not strong, like great people.
Perhaps the priest would suggest her return to Jim. But that wasn't in the law. He could only suggest and urge it. He could not insist on it. She couldn't go back to Jim, she couldn't, she couldn't. She sobbed as if there were a presence in the room which she hoped to move by her tears.
A clear vision of her husband came before her, as she had often seen him, sitting on the edge of this very bed, in undershirt and trousers, leaning forward, breathing abominably loud, his paunch sagging, unlacing his shoes. Right or wrong, good or bad, heaven or hell, that was one sight the priest should never make her see again. She hated Jim and loathed him forever.
As she was dressing next morning she called to Al to please go down and telephone for the doctor, for she knew she could never go through the day's work without medicine.
Presently Dr. Randall bowled up, a jolly stout man, smiling gayly and crinkling up the corners of his eyes, though he had slept just eight hours in the last seventy-two. The family was glumly finishing breakfast when he came. Throughout the meal Mrs. Talbot had been burningly aware of the contrast between decent, self-respecting women with a thought to themselves, and brazen young fly-by-nights in thin waists, who run after men and make themselves free; but she threw only a few pertinent remarks into the atmosphere, because the poor girl was so evidently out of sorts, with her high color and not touching a bite of food. Indeed, a body could hardly help feeling sorry for her, for all her wicked pride of will; very likely this sickness was a judgment on her for it.
When Dr. Randall had considered her pulse, her temperature and her tongue, and asked half a dozen questions, he told Al to send for a carriage and take her immediately to Columbus Hospital.
"Why, doctor," exclaimed Mrs. Talbot, terrorized, "is it anything serious?"
"Typhoid—I'll go telephone to let 'em know you're coming."
The doctor departed and Mrs. Talbot took Georgia on her lap and crooned over her until the carriage came.