First he went home to take his temper to Charity. On the way he worked
up a splendid rage at her for giving such a woman as Zada grounds for
gossip. He went straight to her room and walked in without knocking.
Charity was dictating a letter to her secretary. Cheever surprised a
phrase before she saw him.
“'Thousands of blind soldiers and thousands of orphans hold out their
hands to us. We must all do what we can--' Why, hello! Where did you
drop from? Give me just a minute while I finish this letter. Let me see.
Where was I?”
The secretary read in a dull, secretarial voice:
“'Thousblinsoldiersorphs--wem'sdo'll we can.'”
“Oh yes,” said Charity. “'You have never failed to respond to such an
appeal,' comma; no, semicolon; no, period. 'So I shall put you down
for a subscription of dash 'how much' question-mark. 'Thanking you in
adv'--no, just say, 'My husband joins me in kindest regards to your
dear wife and yourself, cordially yours'--and that will be all for the
present.”
The secretary garnered her sheaves and went out. Charity said to
Cheever:
“Well, young man, sit down and tell us what's on your mind. But first
let me tell you my troubles. There's a match on my dresser there. Peter,
I'm in an awful mess with this movie stunt. I can get plenty of people
to pose for the camera, but I can't find a man to manage the business
end of it. I was lunching with Mrs. Noxon at the Ritz to-day. I called
your friend Jim Dyckman over from another table and begged him to take
the job. But he refused flatly, the lazy brute. Don't you think you
could take it on? I wish you would. It's such a big chance to make a
pile of money for those poor soldiers.”
Cheever was lost. Unconsciously she had cleared up the scandal of her
talk with Dyckman. He remembered that he had seen Mrs. Noxon at another
table, standing. He felt like a dog and he wanted to fawn at the heels
he had prepared to bite. He felt unworthy to be the associate of his
sainted wife in her good works. He said:
“You flatter me. I couldn't manage a thing like that. I'm busy. I--I
couldn't.”
“You've got to play a part, then,” she said. “You're looking so well
nowadays, taking such good care of yourself. Will you?”
“I might,” he said. “I'll think it over.”
She was called to the telephone then and he escaped to his own room.
He moped about and sulked in his uncomfortable virtue. He dressed for
dinner with unusual care. He was trying to make a hit with his wife.
In going through his pocket-book he came across two theater tickets. He
had promised to take Zada. He felt like a low hound, both for planning
to take her and for not taking her. She would have a dismal evening. And
she was capable of such ferocious lonelinesses. He had driven away all
her old friends. She would recall them now, he supposed. That would be
a pity, for they were an odious gang. It would be his fault if she
relapsed. It was his duty, in a way, to help her to reform.
The ludicrous sublimity of such an ethical snarl reduced him to inanity.
He stayed to dinner. Charity had not expected him to stop. She had
planned an evening's excavation into her correspondence and had not
changed her street dress. She was surprised and childishly delighted to
have him with her--then childishly unhappy as she observed:
“But you're all togged up. You're going out.”
“No--well--that is--er--I was thinking you would like to see a show.
I've got tickets.”
“But it's late. I'm not dressed.”
“What's the odds? You look all right. There's never anybody but muckers
there Saturday nights. We'll miss it all if you stop to prink.”
“All right,” she cried, and hurried through the dinner.
He was glad at least that he had escaped a solemn evening at home. He
could not keep awake at home.
So they went to the theater; but there was not “nobody there,” as he had
promised.
Zada was there--alone in a box, dressed in her best, and wearing her
East-Lynniest look of pathos.
The coincidence was not occult. After several hours of brave battle with
grief and a lonely dinner Zada had been faced by the appalling prospect
of an evening alone.
She remembered Cheever's purchase of the theater tickets, and she was
startled with an intuition that he would take his wife in her place. Men
are capable of such indecent economies.
Zada was suffocated with rage at the possibility. She always believed
implicitly in the worst things she could think of. If Peter Cheever
dared do such a thing! And of course he would! Well, she would just find
out!
She threw a lonely wineglass at the fern-dish and smashed a decanter.
Then she pushed off the table about a hundred dollars' worth of
chinaware, and kicked her chair over backward. She had been famous for
her back-kick in her public dancing-days.
She howled to her maid and went into her wardrobe with both hands. She
acted like a windmill in a dress-shop. Finally she came upon what she
was looking for--the most ladylike theater-gown that ever combined
magnificence with dazzling respectability.
She made up her face like a lady's--it took some paint to do that.
Meanwhile, her maid was telephoning speculators for a box. Zada arrived
before Cheever and Charity did. She waited a long time, haughtily
indifferent to the admiration she and her gown were achieving. At last
she was punished and rewarded, revenged, and destroyed by the sight of
Cheever coming down the aisle with Charity. They had to pause to let a
fat couple rise, and they paused, facing Zada. Cheever caught her eye
and halted, petrified, long enough for Charity to sit down, look up
at him, follow the line of his gaze, and catch a full blast of Zada's
beauty and of the fierce look she fastened on Cheever. Charity's eyes
ran back on the almost visible clothes-line of that taut gaze and found
Cheever wilting with several kinds of shame.
He sat down glum and scarlet, and Charity's heart began to throb. A
second glance told her who Zada was. She had seen the woman often when
Zada had danced in the theaters and the hotel ballrooms.
Charity found herself thinking that she was not Cheever's wife, but
only a poor relation--by marriage. The worst of it was that she was not
dressed for the theater. The gown she wore was exquisite in its place,
but it was dull and informal and it gave her no help in the ordeal
she was suddenly submitted to. Her hair had not been coiffed by the
high-elbowed artist with the waving-tongs. Her brains were not marceled
for a beauty-contest with her rival. She was at her worst and Zada was
at her supreme.
Zada was not entirely unknown to Charity. She had not been able
to escape all the gossip that linked Cheever with her, but she had
naturally heard little of it, and then only from people of the sort who
run to their friends with all the bad news they can collect. They are
easily discredited.
Charity had spent so many bad hours wondering at her husband's
indifference and had heard his name linked with so many names that she
had temporized with the situation. Cheever was of the sort that looks at
every woman with desire, or looks as if he looked so. The wives of such
men grow calloused or quit them.
Charity had not quit Cheever. She had hardly dreamed of it. She had not
outgrown being hurt. Her slow wrath had not begun to manifest itself.
This crushing humiliation smote her from a clear sky.
She was not ready for it. She did not know what to do. She only knew, by
long training, that she must not do what she first wanted to do. She had
been taught from childhood what Zada was only now trying to learn.
Charity pretended a great interest in her program and laughed flightily.
Cheever was morose. He stole glances at Zada and saw that she was in
anguish. He felt that he had treated her like dirt. He was unworthy of
her, or of his wife, or of anything but a horsewhip.
He glanced at Charity and was fooled by her casual chatter. He supposed
that she was as ignorant of the affair with Zada as he wanted her to be.
He wished that he could pretend to be unconcerned, but he could not keep
his program from shivering; his throat was full of phlegm; he choked
on the simplest words. He thought for some trick of escape, a pretended
illness, a remembered business engagement, a disgust with the play.
He was afraid to trust his voice to any proposal or even to go out
between the acts.
The worst of it was that he felt sorrier for Zada than for his wife.
Poor Zada had nothing, Charity had everything. How easily we vote other
people everything! Cheever was afraid of the ride home with Charity; he
dreaded to be at home to-night and to-morrow and always. He longed to
go to Zada and help her and let her revile him and scratch him, perhaps,
provided only that she would throw her arms about him afterward.
He never imagined that a duel of self-control, a mortal combat in
refinement, was being fought over him by those two women.
Zada's strength gave out long before Charity's; she was newer to the
game. During a dark scene she surrendered the field and decamped. But
Cheever and his wife both caught the faint shimmer of her respectable
robe as it floated from the rail and vanished in the curtains. It was
like a dematerialization at a seance.
Cheever wanted to crane his neck and dared not. Charity felt a great
withdrawal of support in the flight of her rival. She had not Zada's
presence now to sustain her through the last act. But she sat it out.
She was bitter against Cheever, and her thoughts dark. The burden of his
infidelity was heavy enough for her to bear, but for him to subject her
to such a confrontation was outrageous. She had no doubt that it was a
cooked-up scheme. That vile creature had planned it and that worm of a
husband had consented to it!
The most unforgivable thing of all, of course, was the clothes of it.
Charity, in the course of time, forgave nearly everybody everything, but
she never forgave her husband that.
On the way home she had nothing to say. Neither had Cheever. He felt
homesick for Zada. Charity felt homeless. She must have been the
laughing-stock or the pitying-stock of the whole world for a long time.
When they reached home she bade Cheever a perfectly cheerful good-night
and left him to a cold supper the butler had laid out for him. She did
not know that he stole from the house and flew to Zada.
Charity was tempted to an immediate denunciation of Cheever and a
declaration of divorce. She would certainly not live with him another
day. That would be to make herself an accomplice, a silent partner of
Zada's. It would be intolerable, immoral, not nice.