Charity Coe Cheever was making less progress with her amateur movie-show
than Kedzie with her professional cinematic career.
Charity telephoned to ask Jim Dyckman to act, but he proved to be
camera-shy and intractable.
She had difficulties with all her cast. It was impossible to satisfy
the people who were willing to act with the roles they were willing to
assume.
Charity was lunching at the Ritz-Carlton with Mrs. Noxon when she saw
Jim Dyckman come in with his mother. Mrs. Noxon left Charity and went
over to speak to Mrs. Dyckman. So Charity beckoned Jim over and urged
him to accept the job of impresario.
He protested, but she pleaded for his help at least on an errand or two.
“Jim, I want you to go up to the studio of these people and find this
great man Ferriday and get him to promise to direct for us. And by the
way, that little girl you pulled out of the pool, you know--well, they
promised to get her a job at the studio. You look her up and find out
how she's doing--there's a darling.”
He shook his head, resisting her for once, and answered:
“Go to the devil, Charity darling. You won't let me love you, so I'll be
cussed if I'll let you get me to working for you. I've had you bad and
I'm trying to get well of you. So let me alone.”
That was how Peter Cheever, talking to the headwaiter at the head of
the stairs, saw his wife and Jim Dyckman with their heads together at
a table. He wanted to go over and crack a water-bottle over Dyckman's
head. He did not do it, for the excellent reason that Zada L'Etoile was
at his side. She had insisted on his taking her there “to lunch with the
bunch,” as she expressed it.
She also saw Charity and Jim and Cheever's sudden flush of rage. She
felt that the way was opening for her dreams to come true. She was so
happy over the situation that she helped Cheever out of the appalling
problem before him.
He did not know how to go forward or how to retreat. He could think of
nothing to say to the headwaiter who offered him his choice of tables.
Zada caught his elbow and murmured in her very best voice just loud
enough for the headwaiter's benefit:
“Mr. Cheever, I'm so sorry--but I'm feeling dizzy. I'm afraid I shall
faint if I don't get out in the air. It's very close in here.”
“It is very close, madam,” said the headwaiter, and he helped to support
her down the steps quietly and deferentially, just as if he believed it.
Zada and Cheever thought they were escaping from a crisis, but they were
drifting deeper and deeper into the converging currents. When they were
safe in the motor outside Zada was proud.
“Some get-away, that?” she laughed.
“Wonderful!” said Cheever. “I didn't know you had so much social skill.”
“You don't know me,” she said. “I'm learning! You'll be proud of me
yet.”
“I am now,” he said. “You're the most beautiful thing in the world.”
“Oh, that's old stuff,” she said. “Any cow can be glossy. But I'm going
in for the real thing, Peterkin. I've cut out the cocktails and I don't
dance with anybody but you lately. Have you noticed that? It's the quiet
life and the nice ways for me. Do you mind?”
“It's very becoming” he said. “Anything for a novelty.”
Yet he liked her surprisingly well in this phase. She had been cutting
down his liquor, too. She had been cutting down his extravagances. She
had even achieved the height of denying herself luxuries--one of the
surest and least-trodden short-cuts to a man's heart--a little secret
path he hardly knows himself.
The affair of Zada and Cheever was going the normal course. It had
lost the charm of the wild and wicked--through familiarity; and it was
tending to domestication, as all such moods do if nothing interrupts
them. There are all sorts of endings to such illicit relations: most of
them end with the mutual treachery of two fickle creatures; some of them
end with bitter grief for one or the other or both; some of them end in
crime, or at least disgrace; and some of them finish, with disconcerting
immorality, in an inexcusable respectability.
The improvement in Zada's mind and heart was, curiously, the most
dangerous thing in the world for Cheever. If she had stayed noisy and
promiscuous and bad, he would have tired of her. But she was growing
soft and homey, gentle as ivy, and as hard to tear away or to want to
tear away. After all, marriage is only the formalizing of an instinct
that existed long before--exists in some animals and birds who mate
without formality and stay mated without compulsion.
When Zada and Cheever had escaped from the Ritz-Carlton they took lunch
at another restaurant. Zada was childishly proud of her tact and of
Cheever's appreciation. But afterward, on the way “home”--as she called
what other people called her “lair”--she grew suddenly and deeply
solemn.
“So your wife is with Dyckman again,” she said. “It looks to me like a
sketch.”
Cheever flushed. He hated her slang and he did not accept her
conclusion, but this time he did not forbid her to mention his wife. He
could hardly do that when her tact had saved him and Charity from the
results of their double indiscretion and the shame of amusing that
roomful of gossips.
Zada misunderstood his silence for approval; so she spoke her thoughts
aloud:
“If that He and She business goes on I suppose you'll have to divorce
the lady.”
“Divorce Charity!” Cheever gasped. “Are you dotty?”
That hit Zada pretty hard, but she bore it. She came back by another
door.
“I guess I am--nearly as dotty as she is about Dyckman. First thing you
know she'll be trying to get free herself. What if she asks you for a
divorce?”
“I'd like to see her!”
“You mean you wouldn't give her her freedom?”
“Not in a thousand years.”
He was astounded at the sepulchral woe of Zada's groan. “O Lord, and
I thought--oh--you don't love me at all then! You never really loved
me--really! God help me.”
Cheever wondered what Zada would smash first. He hoped it would not be
the window of the car. He hoped he could get her safely indoors before
the smashing began.
He did. She was a grim and murky storm-cloud full of tornado when they
crossed the pavement and the vestibule of the apartment-house and went
up in the elevator.
But once inside the door, her breast began to heave, her nostrils to
quiver, her fingers to work. Her maid came to take her hat, and paled
to see her torment. Zada gave her her things and motioned her away. She
motioned her four or five times. The maid had needed only one motion.
Cheever watched Zada out of the corner of his eye and wondered why
he had ever been fated to fall in love with such a creature. He was
convinced that he had been fate-forced into the intrigue. He had no
sense whatever of volition or wicked intent. He could only feel that he
had tried to be decent and play fair and be generous.
The thought of what the neighbors were about to hear made him sick with
chagrin. The fact that the neighbors were under suspicion themselves
only aggravated the burden of shame.
The hardest part of Zada's agony was her pitiful effort to take her
medicine like a lady. It was terrific how hard it was for one of a
wildcat heritage and habit to keep the caterwaul back and the claws
muffled. The self-duel nearly wrecked Zada, but she won it. She was not
thoroughbred, but she had tried to be thoroughgoing. She was evidently
not a success as a self-made lady. She kept whispering to herself:
“What's the use? Oh, why did I try? Oh, oh, oh, what a fool I've been!
To think!--to think!--to think!”
Cheever was distraught. He had waited for the outbreak, and when it did
not come he suffered from the recoil of his own tension.
“For the Lord's sake, yell!” he implored.
She turned on him eyes of extraordinary abjection. She saw at last where
her lawlessness had brought her, and she despised herself. But she did
not love him any the more for understanding him. She saw at last that
one cannot be an honest woman without actually being--an honest woman.
She was going to get honesty if it broke a bone.
She told her accomplice: “I want you to go away and stay away. Whatever
you do, leave me be. There's nothing else you can do for me except to
take back all the stuff you've bought me. Give it to that wife you love
so much and wouldn't suspect no matter what she did. You love her so
much that you wouldn't let her go even if she wanted to leave you. So go
back to her and take these things to her with my comp'ments.”
Now it was Cheever who wanted to scream as he had not screamed since
he was the purple-faced boy who used to kick the floor and his adoring
nurse. But he had lost the safety valve of the scream. He smothered.
When Zada began to peel off her rings and thrust them out to him he
swiftly turned on his heel and fled. He never knew whether Zada woke the
block with her howls or not when he left her forever.
He forgot to ask when he came back.