The Thropps knew Kedzie well enough to be afraid of her. A parental
intuition told them that if they wrote to her she would be a long while
answering; if they telephoned her she would be out of town. So they came
unannounced. It had taken them the whole day to trace her. They learned
with dismay that she was no longer “working” at the Hyperfilm Studio.
Adna Thropp and his wife were impressed by the ornate lobby of the
apartment-house, by the livery of the hall-boy and the elevator-boy,
by the apron and cap of the maid who let them in, and by the hall
furniture.
But when they saw their little Kedzie standing before them in her
evening gown--her party dress as Mrs. Thropp would say--they were
overwhelmed. A daughter is a fearsome thing to a father, especially
when she is grown up and dressed up. Adna turned his eyes away from his
shining child.
But the sense of shame is as amenable to costume as to the lack of
it, and Kedzie--the shoulder-revealer--was as much shocked by what her
parents had on as they by what she had off.
The three embraced automatically rather than heartily, and Kedzie came
out of her mother's bosom chilled, though it was a warm night and Mrs.
Thropp had traveled long. Also there was a lot of her.
Kedzie gave her parents the welcome that the prodigal's elder brother
gave him. She was thinking: “What will Jim Dyckman say when he learns
that my real name is Thropp and sees this pair of Thropps? They look as
if their name would be Thropp.”
Adna made the apologies--glad tidings being manifestly out of place.
“Hope we 'ain't put you out, daughter. We thought we'd s'prise you. We
went to the fact'ry. Man at the door says you wasn't workin' there no
more. Give us this address. Right nice place here, ain't it? Looks like
a nice class of folks lived here.”
Kedzie heard the rounded “r” and the flat “a” which she had discarded
and scorned the more because she had once practised them. Children are
generally disappointed in their parents, since they cherish ideals to
which few parents may conform from lack of time, birth, breeding, or
money. Kedzie was not in any mood for parents that night, anyway, but
if she had to have parents, she would have chosen an earl and a countess
with a Piccadilly accent and a concert-grand manner. Such parents it
would have given her pleasure and pride to exhibit to Dyckman. They
would awe-inspire him and arrange the marriage settlement, whatever that
was.
But these poor old shabby dubs in their shabby duds--a couple who
were plebeian even in Jayville! If there had not been such a popular
prejudice against mauling one's innocent parents about, Kedzie would
probably have taken her father and mother to the dumb-waiter and sent
them down to the ash-can.
As she hung between despair and anxiety the telephone-bell rang. Jim
Dyckman called her up to say that he was delayed for half an hour.
Kedzie came back and invited her parents in. It made her sick to see
their awkwardness among the furniture. They went like scows adrift. They
priced everything with their eyes, and the beauty was spoiled by the
estimated cost.
Mrs. Thropp asked Kedzie how she was half a dozen times, and, before
Kedzie could answer, went on to tell about her own pains. Mr. Thropp was
freshly alive to the fact that New York's population is divided into two
classes--innocent visitors and resident pirates.
While they asked Kedzie questions that she did not care to answer, and
answered questions she had not cared to ask, Kedzie kept wondering how
she could get rid of them before Dyckman came. She thanked Heaven that
there was no guest-room in her apartment. They could not live with her,
at least.
Suddenly it came over the pretty, bewildered little thing with her
previous riddle of how to get rid of a last-year's husband so that
she might get a new model--suddenly it came over Kedzie that she had a
tremendous necessity for help, advice, parentage. The crying need for a
father and a mother enhanced the importance of the two she had on hand.
She broke right into her mother's description of a harrowing lumbago
she had suffered from: it was that bad she couldn't neither lay
nor set--that is to say, comfortable. Kedzie's own new-fangled
pronunciations and phrases fell from her mind, and she spoke in purest
Nimrim:
“Listen, momma and poppa. I'm in a peck of trouble, and maybe you can
help me out.”
“Is it money?” Adna wailed, sepulchrally.
“No, unless it's too much of the darned stuff.”
Adna gasped at the paradox. He had no time to comment before she
assailed him with:
“You see, I've gone and got married.”
This shattered them both so that the rest was only shrapnel after shell.
But it was a leveling bombardment of everything near, dear, respectable,
sacred. They were fairly rocked by each detonation of fact.
“Yes, I went and married a dirty little rat--name's Gilfoyle--he thinks
my real name's Anita Adair. I got it out of a movie, first day I ran off
from you folks. I had an awful time, momma--like to starved--would
have, only for clerkin' in a candy-store. Then I got work posln' for
commercial photographers. Did you see the Breathasweeta Chewin'
Gum Girl? No? That was me. Then I was a dancer for a while--on the
stage--and--the other girls were awful cats. But what d'you expect? The
life was terrible. We didn't wear much clo'es. That didn't affect me,
though; some of those nood models are terribly respectable--not that I
was nood, o' course. But--well--so I married Tommie Gilfoyle. I don't
know how I ever came to. He must have mesmerized me, I guess.”
“What did he work at?” said Adna.
“Poetry.”
“Is poetry work?”
“Work? That's all it is. Poetry is all work and no pay. You should have
seen that gink sweatin' over the fool stuff. He'd work a week for five
dollars' worth of foolishness. And besides, as soon as he married me he
lost his job.”
“Poetry?” Adna mumbled.
“Advertising.”
“Oh!”
“Well, we didn't live together very long, and I was perfectly miser'ble
every minute.”
“You poor little honey child!” said Mrs. Thropp, who felt her lamb
coming back to her, and even Adna reached over and squeezed her hand and
rubbed her knuckles with his rough thumb uncomfortably.
But it was good to have allies, and Kedzie went on:
“By an' by Gilfoyle got the offer of a position in Chicago, and he
couldn't get there without borrowing all I had. But I was glad enough to
pay it to him. I'd 'a' paid his fare to the moon if he'd 'a' gone there.
Then I got a position with a moving-picture company--as a jobber--I
began very humbly at first, you see, and I underwent great hardships.”
(She was quoting now from one of her favorite interviews.) “My talent
attracted the attention of the director, Mr. Ferriday. He stands very
high in the p'fession, but he's very conceited--very! He thought he
owned me because he was the first one I let direct me. He wanted me to
marry him.”
“Did you?” said Adna, who was prepared for anything.
“I should say not!” said Kedzie. “How could I, with a husband in
Chicago? He wasn't much of a husband--just enough to keep me from
marrying a real man. For one day, who should come to the studio but Jim
Dyckman!”
“Any relation to the big Dyckmans?” said Adna.
“He's the son of the biggest one of them all,” said Kedzie.
“And you know him?”
“Do I know him? Doesn't he want to marry me? Isn't that the whole
trouble? He's coming here this evening.”
To Adna, the humble railroad claim-agent, the careless tossing off of
the great railroad name of Dyckman was what it would have been to a
rural parson to hear Kedzie remark:
“I'm giving a little dinner to-night to my friends Isaiah, Jeremiah, and
Mr. Apostle Paul.”
When the shaken wits of the parents began to return to a partial
calm they remembered that Kedzie had mentioned somebody named
Gilfoyle--_Gargoyle_ would have been a better name for him, since he
grinned down in mockery upon a cathedral of hope.
Adna whispered, “When did you divorce--the other feller?”
“I didn't; that's the trouble.”
“Why don't you?”
“I can't find him.”
Adna spoke up: “I'll go to Chicago and find him and get a divorce, if I
have to pound it out of him. You say he's a poet?”
Adna had the theory that poetry went with tatting and china-painting as
an athletic exercise. Kedzie had no reason to think differently. She had
whipped her own poet, scratched him and driven him away in disorder. She
told her people of this and of her inability to recall him, and of his
failure to answer the letter she had sent to Chicago.
Her father and mother grew incandescent with the strain between the
obstacle and the opportunity--the irresistible opportunity chained to
the immovable obstacle. They raged against the fiend who had ruined
Kedzie's life, met her on her pathway, gagged and bound her, and haled
her to his lair.
Poor young Gilfoyle would have been flattered at the importance they
gave him, but he would not have recognized himself or Kedzie.
According to his memory, he had married Kedzie because she was a
pitiful, heartbroken waif who had lost her job and thrown herself on his
mercy. He had married her because he adored her and he wanted to protect
her and love her under the hallowing shelter of matrimony. He had given
her his money and his love and his toil, and they had not interested
her. She had berated him, chucked him, taken up with a fast millionaire;
and when he returned to resume his place in her heart she had greeted
him with her finger-nails.
Thus, as usual in wars, each side had bitter grievances which the other
could neither acknowledge nor understand. Gilfoyle was as bitter against
Kedzie as she was against him.
And even while the three Thropps were wondering how they could summon
this vanquished monster out of the vasty deep of Chicago they could
have found him by putting their heads out of the window and shouting his
name. He was loitering opposite in the areaway of an empty residence.
He did not know that Kedzie's father and mother were with her, any more
than they knew that he was with them.