Kedzie had no sooner rejoiced in the fortunate absence of her husband
than she began to worry because he was away. Where was he and with whom?
She sat by the window and looked up and down the street, but she could
find none among the pedestrians who looked like her possessor. She
forgot him in the beauty of the town--all black velvet and diamonds.
Once more she sat with her window open toward her Jerusalem and
worshiped the holy city of her desire. That night at the Biltmore she
was an ignorant country-town girl who had never had anything. Now she
had had a good deal, including a husband. But, strangely, there was just
as much to long for as before--more, indeed, for she knew more things to
want.
As the scientist finds in every new discovery a new dark continent, in
each atom a universe, so Kedzie found from each acquired desire infinite
new desires radiating fanwise to the horizon and beyond.
At first she had wanted to know the town--now she wanted to be known by
the town. Then her father stood in her way; now, her husband. She had
eloped from her parents with ease and they had never found her again.
She had succeeded in being lost.
She did not want to be lost any more; but she was lost, utterly nobody
to anybody that mattered. Now was her chance, but she could not run away
from her husband and get famous without his finding her. If he found her
he would spoil her fun and her fame. She did not know how many public
favorites are married, how many matinee idols are managed by their
wives. She had never heard of the prima donna's husband.
She fell asleep among her worries. She was awakened by the noisy
entrance of her spouse. He was hardly recognizable. She thought at
first that her eyes were bleary with sleep, but it was his face that was
bleary. He was what a Flagg caricature of him would be, with the same
merciless truth in the grotesque.
Kedzie had never seen him boozy before. She groaned, expressively, “My
Gawd! you're pie-eyed.”
He sang an old song, “The girl guessed right the very first time, very
firstime, verfirstime.”
He tried to take her into his arms. She slapped his hands away. He
laughed and flopped into a chair, giggling. She studied him with almost
more interest than repugnance. He was idiotically jovial, as sly as an
idiot and as inscrutable.
Without waiting to be asked he began a recital of his chronicles. He
was as evidently concealing certain things as boasting of others. Kedzie
rather hoped he had done something to conceal, since that would be an
atonement for her own subtleties.
“I have been in Bohemia,” he said, “zhenuine old Bohemia where hearts
are true and eyes are blue and ev'body loves ev'body else. Down there a
handclasp is a pledzh of loyalty. There's no hypocrisy in Bohemia--not a
dambit. No, sirree. The idle rish with their shnobberies and worship of
mere--mere someshing or oth' have no place in Bohemia, for in Bohemia
hearsh are true and wine is blue and--”
“Oh, shut up!” said Kedzie.
“Thass way you're always repressin' me. You're a hopeless Philisterine.
But I have no intentions of shuttin' up, my darlin' Anita--Anita--Shh!
shh!”
He was hushing himself. He was very patently remembering something and
conspicuously warning himself not to divulge it. Kedzie loathed him too
much to care. Now that he was safely housed he ceased to interest her.
She went to bed. He spiraled into a chair to meditate his wickedness.
He felt that he was as near to being a hypocrite as was possible in
Bohemia.
He had met two talented ladies at the dinner, one was a sculptress from
Mr. Samuel Merwin's Washington Square and the other was a paintress
from Mr. Owen Johnson's Lincoln Square. Neither lady had had any work
accepted by the Academy or bought by a dealer. Both were consequently as
fierce against intrenched art as Gilfoyle was against intrenched capital
and literature.
They were there in the company of two writers. One of these could not
get anything published at all except in the toy magazines, which paid
little and late and died early. The other writer could get published,
but not sold. Both were young and needed only to pound their irons on
the anvil to get them hot, but they blamed the world for being cold to
true art. In time they would make the sparks fly and would be in
their turn assailed as mere blacksmiths by the next line of younger
apprentices. They were at present in the same stage as any other new
business--they were building up custom in a neighborhood of strangers.
But at present they were suppressed, all four, men and women; suppressed
and smothered as next June's flowers and weeds are held back by the
conspiracy of December's snows and the harsh criticisms of March.
The sculptress's first name was Marguerite and Gilfoyle longed to call
her by it, after his second goblet of claret-and-water. He had a
passion for first names. He had the quick enthusiasm of a lawyer or an
advertising-man for a new client. Before he quite realized the enormity
of his perfidy he was pretending to compose a poem to Marguerite. He
wrote busily on an old bill of fare which had already been persecuted by
an artist or two. And he wrote his Anita poem over again in Marguerite's
honor, _mutatis mutandis_.
Pretty maid, pretty maid, may I say Marguerita?
Your last name is sweet, but your first name is sweeter.
And so on to the bitter end.
He slipped the lyric to Marguerite and she read it with squeals of
delight, while Gilfoyle looked as modest as such a genius could. The
other girl had to read it, of course, while Gilfoyle tried to look
unconscious. He was as successful as one is who tries to hold a casual
expression for a photograph.
The other girl's reward was a shrug and the diluted claret of a “Very
nice!” Gilfoyle said, “You're no judge or else you're jealous.” The two
men read it, and said, “Mush!” and “Slushgusher!” but Marguerite's eyes
belonged to Gilfoyle the rest of the evening, also her hands now and
then.
Remembering this, Gilfoyle was uneasy. One ought to be careful to keep
an aseptic memory at home. Yet if this was not infidelity, what would
be? In a rich man Gilfoyle would have called it a typical result of the
evil influence of wealth. In the absence of wealth it was a gay little
Pierrot-perfidy of the _vie de Boheme_. Still, poets have to be like
that. An actor must make love to whatever leading lady confronts him,
and so must poets, the lawyers and press agents of love.
But when he got home Gilfoyle repented as he remembered. He suffered on
a rack of guilty bliss, but he managed to hold back the secret which was
bubbling up in him with a bromo-seltzer effervescence. Incidentally his
“pretty maid, pretty maid, Marguerite” had kept back the fact that she
had a husband in the hardware business in Terre Haute. What the husband
was keeping back is none of this history's business.
It was all as old and unoriginal as original sin. The important thing
to Kedzie was the fact that shortly after the poem had been revamped a
stranger had joined, first in song with Gilfoyle's table-load and then
in conversation. He had ended by introducing his companion and bringing
her over. Had it not been for the fine democracy of Bohemia they would
have cut the creature dead. She was a buyer, one of Miss Ferber's Emma
McChesneys on a lark.
Gilfoyle did not tell Kedzie any of this. He told what followed as he
toiled at the fearfully complicated problem of his shoe-laces, a problem
rendered almost insuperable by the fact that he could not hold his foot
high very long and dared not hold his head low at all.
“Wonnerful thing happent t'night, Anita. Just shows you never know where
your lucksh goin' to hit you. I'm down there with--er--er--couple of old
frensh, you know, and who comes over to our table but big feller from
out Wesh--Chicago--Chicago--Gobbless Ch'cag! His name is entitled
Deshler. In coursh conv'sation I mention Breathasweeta Shewing
Gum--see?--he says he knew that gum and he'd sheen the advershments,
bes' ol' ad-vershments ever sheen, thass what Mr. Beshler said and I'm
not lyin' to you, Anita. No, sir.
“Whereupon--whereupon I modesly remark, 'Of course they're
clever--nashurally they're clever, because they were written by l'i'l
Mr. ME!' He says, 'You really wrote 'em?' and I say, 'I roally wretem!'
And Mr. Keshler says, 'Well, I'll be g'dam'.' Then he says, 'Who coined
that name Breathasweeta?' And I says, 'I did!' and he says, 'Well, I'll
be g'dam'!'
“Anyway, to make long shory stort, Mr. Nestor he says, 'What you doin'
now? Writen copy for the Kaiser or the K-zar?' and I says, 'I am a
gen'leman of leisure,' and he says, 'There's a good job waitin' fer lad
your size out in Ch'cag! Would you come 'way out there?' and I says, 'I
fear nothing!'
“So Mr. Zeisselberg wrote his name on a card, and if I haven't los'
card, or he doesn't change his old mind, I am now Mr. John J. Job
of Chicago. And now I got a unsolishited posish--imposishible
solishion--solution--unpolusion solishible--you know what I mean. So
kiss me!”
Kedzie escaped the kiss, but she asked, with a sleepy eagerness, “Did
you tell him you were married?”
“Nashurly not, my dear. It was stric'ly business conv'sation. I
didn' ask him how many shildren he had and he didn' ask me if I was a
Benedictine or a--or a pony of brandy--thass pretty good. Hope I can
rememmer it to-mor'.”
Kedzie smiled, but not at his boozy pun. She seemed more comfortable.
She fell asleep. Next to being innocent, being absolved is the most
soothing of sensations.