Half of August had joined the past. And with it was passing Joe's
complacency. Each day brought a certain routine: customers to be
developed, doubtful and recalcitrant ones to be urged to the
purchasing point. One day's work was very like the next. But each day
passing brought a certain satisfaction, of being one day nearer to the
day ahead.
The day that he had taken Myrtle Macomber up the river road had been
Tuesday. On Wednesday he had risen, sluggish and weary, with an ache
in his bones. A half-hearted, spasmodic attempt at work had ended at
eleven o'clock. He had called up Myrtle. They went that afternoon to a
ball-game. Thursday morning came, bright with promise, and a
profitable forenoon was spent in the old hammer-and-tongs manner. By
noon he had two orders in his pocket and felt quite exhausted. The
heat drank up the very marrow from one's bones. He met Myrtle on the
street. They had lunch together. All that afternoon they paddled about
in the river and came home with hair wet and nerves sagging. Friday
passed, a long dreary day. By the time five o'clock arrived Joe would
willingly have sunk down on the cement pavement in some shaded corner,
just to take his mind from the grip of the traffic. There was nothing
in the selling of motor cars to give his mind anything to bite on.
What was it kept him going, he asked himself? The answer suggested
itself to him, but he shook it off and mused on. Summer was a dreary
time. That night he dragged himself to Lytle Street. He found Miss
Macomber waiting for him on the porch. She was wearing a Nile green
sports suit of soft flannel, with white facings, and white shoes and
stockings and a stiff sailor hat of white straw. As he came up the
walk and approached the steps, he heard a scurrying and moving of
chairs, and as he gained the porch he caught a glimpse of a scuttling
back in a baggy shirt with suspenders, a stooped fat neck that was
collarless, and a frayed-out bald spot--just a glint of it--on the
head above. From humble soil is sometimes nurtured the choicest of
blooms. Joe had never met Mr. Macomber and the mother always seemed to
keep discreetly in the background.
They went that night to the amusement park on the river. Myrtle looked
like a clipping from a style magazine; there was not a flaw in her.
She drank up amusement like a thirsty sponge. They wandered about
after the show. They drank lemonade. They danced in the pavilion. They
wandered about some more, listened for a short time to the trillings
of a robustious prima donna come upon evil days. They soon tired of
this so easily attained diversion and feverishly set out for more.
They danced again. They ran into a crowd of Myrtle's friends. They
joined them in a series of mad dashes on the roller coaster. Myrtle's
zest seemed fed from eternal springs. They danced a third time, or
rather Myrtle did, with each clamouring swain, while the music bleated
and whined away in expiring ecstasies and Joe leaned back against the
window sill and gazed hollow-eyed at the ceiling or answered the
fatuous banalities of some of the less fortunate ladies who were not
dancing at the moment for various reasons. And as they went home that
night, after twelve, they talked of the vast still places of the
world, "where Nature leans a brooding ear" and "where one can be
reposed and strong and silent and happy" and "just drink up the
atmosphere in great gusty draughts, and steep oneself in calm. None of
this terrible grind from day to day."
Saturday, Myrtle went up-state. Saturday was hot and long and
interminable. Sunday she motored, likewise up-state. It did not make
the city streets the cooler, thinking of her. Sunday night produced a
rain and a rising wind and a repetition of that chill, aching
weariness for Joe when he dragged himself to bed. Just as relaxation
slipped down between the covers upon his weary body the future came
and stood at the foot of his bed and stared at him like a flat, empty
sheet of yellow foolscap, without a mark on it, and away it stretched
endless. It was a silly image; it stared so vacantly. But it roused
him with a start and he tossed about restlessly on his bed and threw
back the covers that had become oppressive and let the breeze from the
window, a water-soaked breeze, blow in upon his bare chest. How long
would he be selling motor cars? He shelved that question. How much
would he have to make this month still, to pay all his bills? He
shelved this one, too. What was the matter with him, that he felt so
played out? Suddenly he shivered and was chilled to the marrow, and he
pulled the sheet up under his chin and went to sleep in the absorbed
contemplation of each minute bodily misery.
Monday noon found them lunching together in the tea room. Joe spoke
very distantly and formally to Mary Louise when once she came in,
looked around at the tables, and then disappeared in the mysterious
regions behind. Tuesday night they went on a moonlight picnic on a
large river steamer and got back at half-past one. There had been a
blissful hour of drifting black shadows, of gleaming ripples, and the
heavy sonorous exhaust of benign boilers, spent on the topmost step of
the pilot-house stairs, with a moon that dipped and swam in a turgid
sea of drifting clouds. The rest had been rattle and bang of jazz and
chatter, and bumping about on a hot, swaying floor into obstreperous
shoulders, and the smell of sweetened popcorn and fresh paint and
sickly perfume. Wednesday they went for a ride again and ended up at
the "Ferry" and danced and drank lemonade. And they passed a table
where sat old Mrs. LeMasters with a youngish boy with a very red,
sunburned face, and she wagged her finger at Joe and looked long and
critically at Myrtle. Thursday night he stayed home and felt
solitarily virtuous.
On Friday a picnic had been arranged. Joe "knocked off" work at four
o'clock and went home and dressed by a window through which the sun
streamed broiling hot. Before putting on his shoes he yielded to the
lure of the bed and flung himself upon it. It was all he could do to
drag himself forth and put on the finishing touches. Somehow the
notion of the picnic did not thrill him. There would be the same crowd
on hand, noisy, obstreperous, vulgar. They had no real "punch" to
them. They were like beating a tin pan: all of it was right on the
surface.
He arrived twenty minutes late and was scolded. They loaded a stack of
baskets into his car; all about his feet were cumbersome bundles; and
they scratched the polished panel in the tonneau behind the front
seat. He could hear the grating of the straw basket across the
beautiful surface and he shrank from the sound. Into the seat beside
him clambered the soft, fattish girl. Her name was Penny, he had
learned. She smirked at him as she adjusted her skirts. There was a
line of tiny beady perspiration upon her upper lip and her white
slippers gaped at the sides and were not too clean. Her pink georgette
crepe waist clung to a flabby back with a suggestion of dampness and
she simpered at him:
"I hope Myrtle won't put poison in my ice-tea."
He confessed that that would distress him exceedingly.
Into the back seat clambered the two boys with the copper throats.
Their names were Glotch and Trumpeter. They hailed Joe with acclaim,
slapped Miss Penny on the bare neck, coyly, with little flips of the
fingers, and when the slim, sour-faced girl--who was a Miss
Ardle--with her slicked black hair, climbed in between them, they fell
on her neck in ecstasies of greeting and threatened to kiss her and
were slapped roundly for their pains amid loud guffaws. It ended by
Miss Ardle coming around and sitting in the front seat to the
rapturous discomfort of Miss Penny, whose fat leg was thereby squeezed
against the gear-shifting lever where it was in Joe's way for the
remainder of the trip.
Just before they started, Mrs. Macomber came out of the house carrying
a small package which she brought round and entrusted to Joe's care.
She was wearing a stiffly starched apron and her hair had been
plastered down and her face scrubbed so that the deep rings in the
flabby flesh below her eyes were thereby accentuated. Very pointedly
she looked at Joe and very definitely she spoke:
"You'll see that they get back at a decent hour? And don't let 'em go
in the water." It might have been the tone with which she exhorted Mr.
Macomber. At any rate, Miss Penny pursed her lips and looked at Joe
and then significantly at Miss Ardle, and ever after that made highly
cryptic remarks half aloud, to herself, to the general effect that
some folks' families always were so good to them and how unhappy it
was to be an orphan.
They went to a hot, stuffy little grove by the side of a disconsolate
stream where mosquitoes hummed and tiny gnat creatures were vulgarly
familiar. Joe carried the baskets down a steep and rocky path to the
very edge of the brook, scratching his face with stinging briars and
tough, elastic little switches from ubiquitous bushes. The two young
men in the back seat ostentatiously assisted the ladies in the descent
with much demonstration and much unnecessary pawing. Joe sat down and
waited for Myrtle, who was coming with Hawkins, a look of resignation
on his face.
When at length she finally arrived she paid him no attention in spite
of the fact that he had not seen her for over a whole day. Later on
she gave him some directions in the arranging of the lunch and the
building of the fire, in a strictly impersonal tone, very much the
same as she had used with her mother. Joe was a bit puzzled, but he
complied.
They went straight to the business of the lunch. Everything was spread
out on a white tablecloth, Mrs. Macomber's second best. There was a
baffling variety of sandwiches, olive and peanut-butter, lettuce and
cucumber--quite soggy and dangerous--devilled ham, thin bread and
butter, and a small pile whose filling was made up chiefly of
discarded chicken scraps. There was a highly indigestible chocolate
cake sodden enough to serve as a boat's anchor, a great quantity of
jumbo pickles, and a dozen bottles of near beer. This last Mr. Glotch
welcomed with a stentorian shout ably echoed by Mr. Trumpeter, each of
whom fell to and consumed a bottle with much assumption of inebriety.
After dissembling complete disintegration and coma, Mr. Glotch raised
his head from the ground and mourned, "Oh, boy! The guy that named
this juice sure was a bum judge of distance." "You said it," echoed
Mr. Trumpeter, and they were rewarded by a series of titters from the
ladies which encouraged them into still further excesses.
Joe felt weary. He was fortunately deaf to much of what went on about
him, being concerned in the baffling mystery of Myrtle's behaviour.
Was she provoked at him? Surely not. Was Hawkins, perhaps an erstwhile
rival, putting in a bid for first honours? She was paying no attention
to Hawkins whatever. Had he been talking too much with Miss Ardle or
the coy Miss Penny? Perhaps all she needed was waking up.
They had demolished the lunch and were sitting about the wreckage in
mournful speculation of its vanished glories; Myrtle was seated
between the two comedians; Joe between the two ladies; Hawkins some
distance in the background, on a rock. With no warning whatever Joe
sprang to his feet, strode over to the lovely Myrtle in her filmy
white dress, and picked her bodily from the ground.
"Let's go swimming," he shouted before a single member of the crowd
could give utterance.
He carried her in a couple of strides to the edge of the little stream
and there held her threateningly over the bank. The two young men
shouted approval and Myrtle began to squirm. At first she demanded
coyly to be set down, and then with more sharpness in her tone. Joe
looked into her eyes. They were unfathomable. Her peach-bloom cheeks
were quite pink. But there were a few tiny wrinkles about her mouth
that he had never seen before. Made her look older, somehow. He
softened, for the lovely burden was becoming delightfully heavy.
"Think I'd better not?" he addressed the crowd.
"Go on," urged Mr. Glotch.
"Oh, well," he decided, "perhaps we'll only go in wading." He reached
clumsily down to her foot for her slipper.
She squirmed and flushed deeper. "Don't!" she cried. "Don't, Joe!"
He disregarded her. Her foot dangled out in front, in full view; it
was difficult to reach it without letting her slip and with her
struggling. But he finally succeeded. He caught the French heel in a
sudden swipe and the slipper went scudding off into the bushes.
Immediately she drew the foot in to her and cried out. But not content
he reached for the other.
"If you take that off I'll never speak to you again," she cried. She
looked bewitching, struggling there in his arms all flushed and red,
with her hair coming down. He wanted to kiss her but he grabbed the
remaining slipper instead and firmly disengaged it from its place. And
then she began to cry. And as he held her, struggling no longer, with
one foot dangling disconsolately below his arm, he saw the turn of
shapely ankle all sleek in its sheathing of white silk, the high arch
with the delicate dip to the instep, and below it the gleam of two
pink toes boldly peeping from a malignant hole.
Contrite, he set her down while the audience went hysterical. He set
her down on a grassy mound and she threw him a red, angry look while
the traces of tears were quickly drying. And he noticed that the other
stocking was in the same condition. When he returned her the slippers
she put them on without a word.
The rest of the evening she spent on the rock beside Hawkins while
the two young swains made merry with the other girls and Miss Penny
simpered and Miss Ardle was correspondingly caustic. Joe sat back with
his head against a tree and a hard, tired smile about his mouth, and a
restlessness in the pit of his stomach. He tried not to look at Myrtle
and Hawkins. And once when the crowd surged in a moment's
boisterousness over to another part of the picnic grounds he stretched
himself, rubbed his eyes with the back of his hands to get the smart
out of them, and muttered, "God, what a party!" all to himself.
Later on, when they were gathering up the remains of the lunch and
folding it up in the tablecloth and returning glasses and plates and
cutlery to the basket, Joe found himself standing silently beside
Hawkins, watching the preparations for leaving. The moonlight was
streaming down in a silvery flood through the trees and the bit of
green meadow glowed like a fairy ring. There were silvery ripples on
the water of the little stream that slipped off with a tinkling
chatter into the deep gloom of the shadow. Somewhere near a wild
honeysuckle bloomed and the fragrance of its blooming came drifting to
them. Hawkins spoke. He stood with eyes fixed on the stooping figures
near the tablecloth and his lips barely moved.
"How'd you get mixed up in this crowd?" he said. It was a curious
question.
Joe looked at him oddly; the fellow's manner was, always had been,
peculiar. "How about yourself?" he replied.
Without answering, Hawkins lifted his shoulders and threw out his
hands. Then they were both called to come and help.
Joe had the sole company of Miss Penny on the return trip. She was
inclined to be quiet and answered his polite attempts with
monosyllables. He wondered if by chance he might be being remiss in
the customs of such an occasion, but he did not care much. The three
on the back seat had lapsed into a strange silence that seemed out of
place, like death in a boiler shop, and when they finally reached the
city limits and passed beneath the glare of the first corner light, he
took a look behind him and caught Miss Ardle kissing the imperious
Glotch. He turned and looked at Miss Penny. She sat with her hands in
her lap, looking demurely at them.
He delivered them all to their respective destinations. And then,
having the load of baskets and picnic utensils in the car, he returned
to Lytle Street to see that they were properly handed over. He passed
Hawkins' roadster as he turned the corner into Lytle Street and
wondered if he were too late.
But as he staggered up the walk with the baskets, Myrtle came to meet
him at the top of the steps and showed him where to put them. And as
he turned and would have gone, she stopped him with a soft word. On
the top step she came and took hold of him by both elbows and looked
up into his face with eyes that were swimming with sweetness. He
gulped and was bitterly sorry for his folly. He started to speak, when
she reached up with her hand and softly passed it across his forehead;
the touch of it was as exquisite and as transient as a dream. He felt
unmentionable depths.
"Hope you're feeling better," she murmured.
"Why?" he managed to ask. And then he remembered he had told her he
had been unwell Thursday which accounted for his absence. And then:
"Oh, I do. Much. All right now." An errant moonbeam came straggling in
between a break in the screen of vines and lighted up her face,
looking up into his, flooding it with a sort of holy wistfulness.
Softly she moved away, out of the light.
An hour later he clambered into his car and drove away.