"Shall I ever go in or out of this door again?"
Jennie lingered on the threshold to ask herself this question, and, as
she did so, saw Bob Collingham lift his hat.
For the time being she had forgotten him. That is, she had a way of
putting him out of her mind except when, as he expressed it to herself,
he came bothering her. Bothering her meant asking her to marry him,
which he had done perhaps twenty times. Each time she refused him she
considered that it was for good. There was a quality in him that raised
her ire--a certainty that, pressed by need, she would one day come to
him. That, Jennie said to herself, would be the last thing! She wouldn't
do it as long as there was any other possibility on earth. In view,
however, of the state of things at home and Wray's cold-bloodedness at
the studio it had sometimes seemed to her of late as if earth would not
afford her any other possibility.
If she welcomed him now, it was chiefly as a distraction from thoughts
which, were she to keep dwelling on them, would drive her mad. Her
temperament being naturally happy, anguish was the more anguishing for
being so unnatural. The mere necessity of having to strive with Bob
called forth in her that spirit of sex-wrestling which was not so much
second nature in her as it was first.
She greeted him, therefore, with a sick little smile, and allowed him to
limp along beside her. The studio building was in a street in the
Thirties and east of Lexington Avenue. To take the way by which she
usually went, they sauntered toward the sunset.
"You're in trouble, Jennie, aren't you?"
The kindly tone touched her. He was always kind. He was always looking
for little things he could do. It was part of the trouble with him from
her point of view that he was so watchful and overshadowing. He poured
out so much more than her cup was able to receive that he frightened
her. All the same, his sympathy, coming at this minute, started her
tears afresh.
"Is it things at home?" he persisted, when she didn't respond.
Thinking this enough for him to know, she admitted that it was.
"I've got something in my pocket that would--that would help all
that--in the long run."
From anyone else this would have alarmed her. She would have taken it to
mean money, money which she would in her own way be expected to repay.
As it was she merely turned her swimming eyes toward him in mild
curiosity.
"Look!"
Seeing a little white box which could contain nothing but a ring held
between his thumb and forefinger on the edge of his waistcoat pocket,
she flushed with annoyance.
"I think you'd better go away," she said, coldly, pausing to give him
the chance to take his leave.
"And chuck you back upon your trouble?"
The argument was more effective than he knew. Jennie became aware that
even this little bit of drama had put home conditions and Wray's cruelty
a perceptible distance behind her. It was sheer terror at being thrown
on them again that induced her to walk on, tacitly permitting him to
stay with her.
"You can't be saved from one kind of trouble by getting into another,"
she argued, ungraciously. "The fire's not much of a relief from the
frying pan."
"It is if it doesn't burn you--if it only warms and comforts you and
makes it easier to live."
"This fire would burn me--to death."
"Oh no, it wouldn't; because I'd be there. I'd be the stoker, to see
that it was kept in the furnace. The furnace in the house, Jennie, is
like the heart in the body--something out of sight, but hot and glowing,
and cheering everybody up." If she could have listened to such words
from Hubert Wray, she thought, how enraptured she would have been. "Did
you ever hear the story of the guy who gave us fire in the first place?"
Bob continued, as she walked on and said nothing. "You know we didn't
have any fire on earth--at least, that's the tune to which the rig is
sung. The gods had fire in heaven, but men had to shiver."
"Why didn't they freeze to death?''
"They did--in a parable way. It wasn't life they lived; it was a great
big creeping horror on the edge of nothing. Then this old bird--I forget
his name--went up to heaven--"
"How did he do that?"
"The story doesn't tell; but up he went, stole the fire, and brought it
down. After that, they were able to open the ball we call
'civilization,' which gives every one a good time."
"Oh, does it? Much you know!"
"I know this much, Jennie--that I could give you a good time if you'd
let me."
"You couldn't give me the good time I want."
"But I could make you want the good time I'd give you, which would come
to the same thing. I imagine the folks on earth didn't think much of the
fire from heaven--beforehand; but once they'd got it, they knew what it
meant to them. That's the way you'd feel, Jennie, if you married me. You
can't begin to fancy now--" On coming in sight of a line of taxicabs
drawn up before a hotel, he broke off to say, "Do you see those taxis,
Jennie?"
She replied that she did.
"Well, one of them may mean a great deal to you and me."
"Which one of them?"
"Whichever one we get into."
"Why should we get into it?"
"Because"--he tapped the white box in his waistcoat pocket--"this little
thing I've got in here wouldn't do us any good without something else.
We should have to go after it together."
Her mystified expression told him that she was in the dark.
"It's something we should have to ask for, and to sign--Robert Bradley
Collingham, bachelor, and Jane Scarborough Follett, spinster--I believe
that's the way it runs."
"Oh!" The low ejaculation was just enough to show that she understood.
"Why shouldn't we, Jennie? It wouldn't take half an hour to get there
and back."
"'Back?'" She was so dazed that she echoed the word more or less
unconsciously.
They came in sight of a low brown tower at which he pointed with his
stick. "Do you see that church? Well, that church has got a
parson--quite a decent sort for a parson--"
"How do you know?"
"Because I talked to him--about half an hour ago. I said that if he was
going to be at home, we might look in on him toward the end of the
afternoon."
"You had no right to say anything of the kind."
"I know I hadn't, but I took a chance. Won't you take a chance, too,
Jennie? It would mean the beginning of the end of all your troubles. In
the long run, if not in the short run, I could take them off your
hands."
That she should be dead to this argument was not in human nature. Her
basic conception of a man was of one who would relieve her of her
burdens. Helplessness was a large part of her appeal. That marriage
meant being taken care of imparted, according to her thinking, its chief
common sense to the institution. She shrank from marrying _just_ to be
taken care of; but if there was no other way, and if in this way she
could bring to the family the stupendous Collingham connection in lieu
of her six a week.... She made up her mind to temporize.
"What makes you in such an awful hurry? We could do it any other day--"
"Did you ever see a sick man who wasn't in an awful hurry to get well?"
"You're not as bad as all that."
"Listen, Jennie," he said, with an ardor enhanced by her hints at
relenting; "listen, and I'll tell you what I am. I'm like a chap that's
been cut in two, who only lives because he knows the other half will be
joined to him again."
"That's all very well; but where's the other half?"
"Here." He touched her lightly on the arm. "You're the other half of me,
Jennie; I'm the other half of you."
She laughed ruefully.
"That's news to me."
"I thought it might be. That's why I'm telling you. You don't suppose
any other fellow could be to you what I'd be, do you?"
"I don't know what you'd be to me because I've so many other things to
think of first."
"What sort of things?"
"What your folks would say, for one."
He replied, with a shade of embarrassment: "They'd say some pretty mean
things, to begin with."
"And to end with?"
"They'd give in. They'd have to. Families always do when you only leave
them Hobson's choice."
She dropped into the studio idiom.
"That wouldn't be all pie for me, would it?"
"Is anything ever all pie? You've got to work for your living in this
old world if you want to eat. I'm ready to work for this, Jennie. I'm
ready to move mountains for it, and, by God! I'm going to move them! But
do you know why?"
She said, shyly, "I suppose because you like me."
"I don't know whether I do or not. That's not what I think about first."
Though they had not yet reached the line of taxicabs, he paused to make
an explanation. "Suppose you were inventing a machine and had got it
pretty well fitted together, only that you couldn't make it work. And
suppose, one day, you found the very part that was missing--the thing
that would make it run. You'd know you'd have to have that one thing,
wouldn't you? You'd have to have it--or your life wouldn't be worth
while."
"I never heard any other man talk like that."
"Listen, Jennie. There are men and men. They'll go into two big bunches.
To one kind women are like whisky--some better than others, but all
good. If they can't have Mary, Susan'll do, and when they're tired of
Susan they'll run after Ann. That's one kind of fellow, and he's in the
great majority. They're polygamous by nature, those chaps. I suppose the
Lord made them so. Anyhow, as far as I can see--and I've seen pretty
far--they can't help themselves." He drew a long breath. "Then there's
another kind."
If Jennie listened with attention, it was not because she was interested
in him, but in Hubert Wray. Hubert had more than once said things of the
same kind. He had declared male constancy to be outside the
possibilities of flesh and blood, and, with her preference for cave men,
Jennie had agreed with him. That is, she had agreed with him as to
everyone but himself. Others could take their pleasure where and as they
found it; but she could not conceive of any man loving her, or of
herself loving any man, unless it was for life. On the subject of
constancy or inconstancy, this was her sole reservation.
"You'll think me an awful chump, Jennie, but I'm that other kind."
She threw him a sidelong glance of some perplexity.
"You mean the kind that--"
"I'm not polygamous," he declared, as one who confessed a criminal
tendency. "There it is, laid out flat. I'm--" He hesitated before using
the term lest she might not understand it. "There's a word for my kind,"
he went on, tenderly. "It's monogamous."
She made a little sound of dismay at the strangeness, it almost seemed
the indecency, of the syllables.
"Yes; I thought you might never have heard it," he pursued, in the same
tender strain, "but it means the opposite of polygamous. A polygamous
guy wants to marry all the wives he can make love to. A one-wife chap
like me asks for nothing so much as to be true to the girl he loves. I'm
that kind, Jennie."
To his amazement, and somewhat to his joy, he saw a tear trickle down
her cheek. It was a tear of regret that Hubert couldn't have expressed
himself like this, but Bob thought her touched by his appeal. It
encouraged him to continue with accentuated warmth.
"You've heard of what they call the battle of the sexes, haven't you?"
She thought she had.
"Well, that's what it comes from chiefly--the crowds of polygamous men
and the small number of polygamous women; or else it's the crowds of
monogamous women and the small number of monogamous men. Out of every
hundred men, about ninety are polygamous, and ten want only one woman
for a lifetime. Out of every hundred women, ninety are satisfied to love
one man, and the other ten are rovers. Don't you see what a bad fit it
makes?"
"Yes; but how do you know I'm not one of the rovers?"
"You couldn't be, Jennie. Even if I thought you might be, I'd be willing
to take a chance. And the reason I've spun this rigmarole to you is
because, if you don't take me, it'll be ten to one that you'll fall into
the hands of one of the gay ninety who'll make your life a hell. I'd
hate that. God! how I should hate it! Even if I didn't care anything
about you, I should want to marry you, just to save you from some fancy
man who'd think no more of breaking your heart than he would of smashing
an egg-shell."
As they walked on toward the row of public conveyances, he explained
himself further. On Monday next he might sail for South America. But he
couldn't do this leaving everything at loose ends between them. If she
married him, he could go off with an easy mind, and they could keep
their secret till his return. In the meanwhile he would be able to
supply her with a little cash, not much, he was afraid, as dad kept so
tight a rubber band round the pocketbook. It would, however, be
something, and he would know that she could give up her work at the
studio without danger of starving to death.
"And you might as well do it first as last, Jennie," he summed up,
"because I mean that you shall do it sometime."
"And suppose," she objected, "that you came back from South America in
six months' time--and were sorry. Where should I be then?"
He argued that this was impossible. A monogamous man always knew his
mate as a monogamous bird knew his. It was instinct that told them both,
and instinct never went wrong.
They reached the row of taxis, and, in spite of the queer looks of the
passers-by, he took her by the hand.
"Come, Jennie, come!"
But she hung back.
"Oh, Bob, how can I? All of a sudden like this!"
"It might as well be all of a sudden as any other way, since you're my
woman and I'm your man."
"But I don't believe it."
"Then I'll prove to you that it's so."
Though he could not do this, she went with him in the end. She was not
won; she was not more moved by his suit than she had been at other
times; she still shrank from the scar on his brow and the touch of his
tremendous hands. But she was afraid of letting him go, of dropping back
into the horror of no lover in the studio and no money to bring home. To
do this thing would save her from that emptiness, even if it led to
something worse. Worse would be easier to bear than returning to nothing
but a void; and so slowly, reluctantly, with anguish in her heart, she
let herself be helped into the shabby vehicle.
----
An hour or so later, Teddy reached home. He arrived breathless, because
he had run nearly all the way from the street-car. In the empty spaces
of Indiana Avenue he felt himself conspicuous. He knew it was fancy,
that no hint of his folly could have come to this quiet suburb, and that
his theft could not possibly be discovered as yet, even by those most
concerned. But he was not used to a guilty conscience. Already in
imagination he saw himself tried, sentenced, and serving a long sentence
at Bitterwell, of which he had once seen the grim gray walls.
"God! I'd shoot myself first!" was his comment to himself, as he hurried
past the trim grassplots where care-free men in shirt sleeves were
watering their bits of lawn.
It was Pansy who first knew that something was amiss. At sound of his
hand on the door knob she had come scampering, with little silvery
yelps, and had suddenly been checked by the atmosphere he threw out.
Pansy knew what wrongdoing was; she knew the pangs of remorse. She had
once run away from being shut up in the coalbin, her fate when the
family went to the movies, and had been lost for half a day. The agony
of being adrift and the joy of seeing Gussie come whistling and calling
down the Palisade Walk formed the great central escapade in Pansy's
memory. For days afterward, whenever the family spoke of it, she would
stand with forepaws planted apart, and head hanging dejectedly, aware
that no terms could be scathing enough fully to cover her guilt.
And here was Teddy in the same state of mind. Pansy had learned that the
great race could suffer; but she hadn't supposed that it could get into
scrapes like herself. All she could do on second thoughts was to creep
forward timidly, raise herself on her hind legs, with her paws against
his shin, and tell him that whatever the trouble was she had been
through it all.
He paid her no attention because, as he looked into the living room,
Gladys was seated at a table, crying, her hands covering her face. At
the same time Gussie was peacocking up and down the room, saying things
to her little sister that were apparently not comforting. Now that
Gussie, at Madame Corinne's request, had "put up" her hair, her great
beauty was apparent. Her face had not the guileless purity of Jennie's,
but it had more intellectual vigor and much more fire.
Gladys was Teddy's pet, as she was her father's. Of the three girls, she
was the plain one, a little red-haired, snub-nosed thing, with some
resemblance to Pansy, and a heart of gold. Teddy went over and laid his
hand on her fiery crown.
"Say, poor little kiddie, what's the matter?"
"It's my feet," Gladys moaned.
"And she thinks that learning the millinery at three-fifty per is all
jazz and cat-step," Gussie declared, grandly. "Well, let her try it and
see. She's welcome. My soul and body! Corinne would blow her across the
river when she got into a temper. I say that if you're a cash girl
you've got to take the drawbacks of a cash girl, and what's the use of
kicking? If you're on your feet, you're on your feet. Rub 'em with oil
and buck up. That's what I say."
"It's all very well for you to talk, spit-cat," Gladys retorted. "All
you've got to do is to play with ribbons as if you were dressing a doll.
If you had to run like Pansy every time some stuck-up thing calls,
'_Ca-ash!_'--"
Gussie undulated her person and her outstretched arms in sheer joy of
the dancing step as she strutted up and down.
"That's right, old girl. Blame it on me. I'm always the one that's in
the wrong in this house. If Master Teddy lets a glass fall and breaks
it, as he did last night, I pushed it out of his hand on purpose, though
I'm in the next room. All the same, I say, 'Buck up,' and I don't care
who says different. Sniffing won't cure your feet or give you a brother
like Fred Inglis who can pay for a woman to do all the heavy work, and
his mother hardly lifting a hand."
Teddy passed on to the kitchen to see if his mother was there.
She was seated at a table with a ham bone before her, and from it was
paring the last rags of the meat. He tried to take his old-time tone of
gayety.
"Hello, ma! At it again? What are you giving us for supper? Something
good, I'll bet."
Lizzie went on working without lifting her eyes. She didn't even smile.
Teddy sensed something new in the way of care, as Pansy had sensed it in
him. He stood at a little distance, waiting for the look that had never
failed to welcome him, but which this time didn't come.
"What's the matter, ma? Has anything gone wrong?"
Putting down the ham, Lizzie raised her eyes, though with no light in
them.
"It's nothing so very wrong, dear, but I haven't told your sisters
because it's no use to worry them if--"
"What is it, ma? Out with it."
She told him. If it was necessary to go without a hot meal between
Wednesday and Saturday, of course it could be done; but even on Saturday
the gas people would demand fifteen dollars on account before the gas
would be turned on again. There were just two possibilities: The father
might come home with the news that he had found a job, or Teddy might
have--she didn't believe it, but he had talked of saving for a new suit
of clothes--Teddy might have fifteen dollars laid away.
He turned his back and walked out of the kitchen. He did it so
significantly that it seemed to the mother there could be only one
meaning to the act. He had saved the money and resented being robbed of
it. She knew he was something of a coxcomb, and had always been proud
that he could look so neat. He had only two suits, a common one and a
best one, but even the common one was as brushed and pressed and stylish
as if he had a valet. Nevertheless, his great activity and his love of
rough-and-tumble skylarking made him hard on clothes in the sense of
wear, and the common one was growing shiny at the seams and thin where
there was most attrition. A new suit was an urgent necessity; so that if
he had a few dollars put away toward getting it, it would be no wonder
if it hurt him to be asked to give them up.
But Teddy had no few dollars put away. When the fund for the new suit
could be counted otherwise than in pennies, some special need had always
swept it into the family treasury. Teddy had let it go without a sigh.
He would have let it go without a sigh to-day, only that he had nothing
saved. Being naturally of a loving, care-taking disposition, it meant
more to him that Gussie or Gladys should have a new pair of shoes than
that he should be able to emulate Fred Inglis in ordering a suit at
Love's.
Having left the kitchen, he did not go farther than the living room,
where, Gussie having taken herself upstairs, Gladys was drying her eyes.
He merely walked to the end of the room, his hands in his pockets, as he
stared above one of the hydrangea trees into Indiana Avenue. The windows
being open, the voices of playing children mingled with the even-song of
birds. To Teddy, there was mockery in these cheerful sounds. There was
mockery in the westering May sunshine, mockery in the groups of girls,
bareheaded and arm in arm, as they strolled toward Palisade Walk;
mockery in the ruddy-faced men who watered their shrubs and grass;
mockery in the aproned women who came to windows or doors in the
intervals of preparing supper. It all spoke of a homey comfort and
content, with no bluff behind it. In the Follett house all was
bluff--and misery.
Somehow, for reasons he couldn't fathom, the cutting off of the gas from
the range seemed the last humiliation. In the matter of food, if one
thing was too dear, you could eat another. So it was in the whole round
of essentials in living. You could get a substitute or you could go
without. But for heat there was no substitute, and you couldn't go
without it. It ranked with clothes and shelter as a necessity even among
savages. And yet here they were, a civilized family, living in a
civilized house, in a suburb of New York, deprived of what even Micmacs
could have at will. It was one of the happenings that could never have
been foreseen as possibilities.
His hands being in his pockets, Teddy fingered the twenty-dollar bill.
He did this unconsciously, merely because it was there. It did occur to
him to wish it was his own; but his wishes went no farther.
They had gone no farther when he swung on his heel to go back to the
kitchen. He must tell his mother that he didn't have fifteen dollars put
away. He hadn't done so at once merely because his emotions had been too
strong for him.
He pulled his burly figure down the length of the room as one who has to
drag himself along. If he had only been Fred Inglis, he would have
handed his mother a sheaf of bills with instructions to buy all she
wanted. Why couldn't he, Teddy Follett, do the same? He was, as Gussie
phrased it, a great big fellow of twenty-one--and his value was only
eighteen per. He had proved that to his own satisfaction, for in
secretly trying to unearth a better place he had been offered less than
he got at Collingham & Law's.
What were the shackles that bound him? Were they of his own creation, or
were they forced on him by the world outside? He was as industrious as
his father had been, and, except for a tendency to do his work with a
broad grin, just as wholehearted. If good intentions had commercial
value, both father and son should have been rated high; but here was his
father a bit of old junk, while he himself, having reached man's estate,
having served his country, having tacitly offered himself to the limit
of his strength, was rewarded with a wage on which he could hardly live,
to say nothing of helping others live.
Madly, wildly, these thoughts churned in his mind as he lurched down the
room toward the kitchen, while Pansy watched him with a look into which
she was putting all her soul.
He knew what he would say. He would say: "Ma, it's no go. I haven't a
red cent. We've got to eat cold and wash cold till Saturday, anyhow.
We'll not look farther ahead than that. When Saturday comes, we'll see."
But, on the threshold of the kitchen, he saw something which brought a
new sensation. In free fights while in the navy he had thought he had
seen red; but he had never seen red like this. He had never supposed it
possible that this torrent of wrath, tenderness, and pity should rise
within himself, a fountain spouting at the same time both sweet water
and bitter.
His mother was seated at the table, crying. The ham bone was before her,
the rags of meat on the plate, and the knife on top of them. But she,
like Gladys a few minutes previously, had covered her face with her
hands, while her shoulders rocked.
In all his twenty-one years Teddy had never seen his mother cry. He had
cried; the girls had cried; his father had very nearly cried; but his
mother never. The strong spirit had grieved in strong ways, but not in
this way. Now it seemed as if all the griefs she had laid up since the
days when she was Lizzie Scarborough had heaped themselves to the point
at which these strange, harsh, unnatural tears were their only
assuagement.
Teddy was down on his knees beside her, his arm flung round her neck.
"Ma! Good old ma! Dear old ma! Don't cry! For God's sake don't cry! Stop
_crying_, ma!" he shouted, in an imploring passion as strange, harsh,
and unnatural as her own. "Here's the money I had saved for my new
clothes. Take it and go and pay something on the gas bill. There! There!
Stop! For God's sake! For your little boy's sake! I love you, ma. Only
stop! There! That's better! Calm down, ma! Everything will be all right,
and I'll--I'll get the new clothes by and by."
But in his heart he was saying, "To hell with Collingham & Law's!" as he
laid the bill before her.