Following this little disturbance the Sims couple, lowering their heads,
side by side, resolutely regained the smooth rut of their placid
existence. Everything in this world is easier than is imagined. Much
easier. In the case of the Sims' household, it was just a matter of
adding each morning, to the daily shave of Charles-Norton, another
operation quite as facile.
"Dolly," he would call, as soon as his hot towel had removed from his
ruddy cheeks the last bubbles of lather.
And Dolly, her hungry little scissors agleam in her hand, trotted in
alacriously. She sat Charles-Norton on the edge of the tub and bent over
him her happy, humming head. Zip-zip-zip, went the scissors, zip-zip--and
a soft white fluff that looked like the stuffing of a pillow (an A-one
pillow; not the kind upon which Charles-Norton and Dolly laid their
modest heads) eddied slowly to Charles-Norton's feet while he shivered
slightly to the coldness of the steel. (Dolly cut very close.)
Then, "All right; all done," she sang, dropping the scissors into the
round pocket of her crackling apron; "now to breakfast, quick! And
here's a kiss for the good boy."
Placing her red lips upon his, she whisked off to the kitchenette; and
Charles-Norton, emerging all dressed a little later, found the cheerful
blue ware on the table, and his waffles upon his plate, hot beneath his
napkin. After which, stuffing the morning paper into his pocket, he
departed with another kiss on the landing, and strode forth for the L.
Life was just as before.
And yet, not quite. Because, to tell the truth, Charles-Norton was not
absolutely happy.
He could not have told what was the matter. Mostly, it was an emptiness.
An emptiness is hard to analyze. He knew that there was much of which he
should be content. With the careful repression of the vagaries of his
shoulders, there had come to him a new attentiveness at his work. His
nose, now, never wandered after passing butterflies, and his salary had
been raised to twenty-two dollars a week. Also, the ridiculous flapping
had gone, and the impulse to draw fool lines upon a card.
But with these--and that was the trouble--other things had vanished. That
deep filling of his lungs with spring, for instance. And the longing that
went with it. That was it--the longing. He longed for the longing--if
that is comprehensible. He longed vaguely for a longing that had been
his, and which was gone. He never saw, now, a land that was as a golden
pool beneath a turquoise dome; nor a boy in the wild oats watching a
circling hawk.
And there was something else, something more definite. He felt that
Dolly--yes, Dolly took too much pleasure, altogether too much pleasure in
that clipping business. Of course, the clipping had to be. He knew that.
A respectable man can't have feathers on his shoulders. It was necessary.
But somehow he would have felt that necessity more, if Dolly had felt
it--less. He would have liked a chance to voice it himself. If Dolly,
now, only would, some fine morning, say, "Oh, Goosie, let them be
to-day; they are so pretty," then he could have answered, very firmly,
"No, clip away!" But she never gave him that chance. She was always so
radiantly ready! As he watched her head in the mirror, bent upon the busy
scissors with an expression of tight determination, a distinct irritation
seized him sometimes.
Charles-Norton, in short, was accumulating, drop by drop, a masculine
grouch. A grouch deeper than he realized, till that morning.
That morning Dolly, in the midst of the daily operation, paused with
scissors in air, a sudden inspiration upon her brow.
"Oh, Goosie," she exclaimed; "How would it be to cauterize them?"
Charles-Norton gave a jump. "Cauterize!" he cried; "cauterize what?"
"Why, the little feathers. Supposing we burned the place, you know, with
nitrate of silver, or something like that. They do it to people who have
moles--or when they have been bitten by a mad dog. Maybe--maybe it would
stop it--altogether."
Charles-Norton looked up at her. Her cheeks were rosy, her eyes were
bright; she was excited and pleased with her ingenious idea. A cold wave
rose about Charles-Norton and closed over his head. "Say,'" he bawled
ungraciously; "what do you take me for! Think I'm made of asbestos?"
Discreet Dolly immediately dropped the subject; though somehow
Charles-Norton had the distinct impression that it was only discreetly
that she did so, that, in fact, she was not dropping the idea, but merely
tucking it away somewhere within the secret hiding-places of her being,
for further use. He could still see it, in fact, graven there upon the
whiteness of her voluntary little forehead.
He brooded black over it all day. He brooded on other things,
too--insignificant things that had happened in the past, that had not
mattered one whit then, but which now, beneath his fostering care, began
to grow into big, flapping boog-a-boos. And when he returned that night,
he was a very mean Charles-Norton. He spoke hardly a word at dinner,
pretended he did not like the vanilla custard over which Dolly had toiled
all day, her soul aglow with creative delight, sipped but half of his
demi-tasse (as though the coffee were bitter, which it wasn't), and went
off to bed early with a good-night so frigid that Dolly's little nose
tingled for several minutes afterward.
And the next morning, when Dolly, astonished at the delay, finally peeped
into the bath-room, scissors in hand, she found Charles-Norton fully
dressed, his coat on.
"Why, Goosie," she said in surprise; "I haven't clipped you yet!"
"No?" he growled enigmatically.
"Take off your coat, dearie," she went on.
"And you're not going to," said Charles-Norton, finishing his statement
with complete disregard of hers.
Dolly stood there a moment, looking at him with head slightly cocked to
one side. "All right, Goosie," she said cheerily. "Only, don't get mad at
poor little me. Come on to breakfast, you big, shaggy bear, you!"
"I don't _want_ any breakfast," growled Charles-Norton between closed
teeth (as a matter of fact, he did, and a fragrance of waffles from the
kitchen was at the moment profoundly agitating the pit of his being). "I
don't _want_ any breakfast--where's my hat--quick, I'm in a
hurry--good-by."
And tossing the hat bellicosely upon his head, he pulled to himself the
hall door, swaggered through, and let it slam back on his departing
heels, right before the astonished nose of his little wife.
She remained there before this rude door, examining its blank surface
with a sort of objective curiosity. At the same time she was listening to
the sound of steps gradually diminishing down the five flights. She shook
her head; "the bad, bad boy!" she said.
She pivoted with a shrug of the shoulders and went back to the kitchen
and sat down at the table, all set for breakfast. She took up her fork
and cut off a bit of waffle. She placed it in her mouth. Her eyes went
off far away.
It took it a long time, this little piece of waffle, to go down. Lordie,
what a tough, resilient, flannelly, bit of waffle this was! Suddenly her
head went forward. It lit upon the table, in her hands. A cup of the
precious blue ware, dislodged, balanced itself a moment on the edge of
the table, then, as if giving up hope, let go and crashed to the floor
at her feet in many pieces. She gave it no heed. Her head was in her
hands, her hands were on the table, her hair lay like a golden delta
among plates and saucers; and the table trembled.