filled with a long, anxious, childish dream concerning an attempt to
find the right train in a huge and bewildering railway station, held
him fast in its grip. Apparently he was waiting for Monica’s knock to
awaken him. But no knock came, and it was ten o’clock before he opened
his eyes. A bad start! He would have to get an alarm clock.
He called on an advertising agency that day, and was not surprised to
be told that they needed no one.
The rest of the day he spent in an aimless wandering about the streets.
The next day, again rising late from the enthrallment of an
anxiety-dream, he called on another advertising agency, and again used
his further time in meaningless perambulation. The fact was that the
experience of being refused a job robbed him of his courage for the
rest of the day. And in addition there was a half-conscious conviction
of the hopelessness of his search, which made him want to stretch out
the effort over a period of days or weeks, and postpone as long as
possible the inevitable conclusion of failure....
What occupied his thoughts during these long days was a monotonous
series of trifles which had assumed for him a heavy and grave
importance. One, which took all week to decide about, concerned
the buying of an alarm clock. He certainly needed one--there was
no doubt of that. He was rising later and later from his poisonous
fear-dreams.... But a clock cost money. He looked at clocks in the
windows of drug stores as he passed, noted their prices, and figured
out in his mind how many hours of his money the cheapest of them would
set him back. For he had his money computed now in terms of hours.
Every dollar, as he had calculated it, gave him and his child eight
hours and some forty-eight minutes of food and shelter. A forty-five
cent clock might seem cheap enough, but it robbed them of four hours’
security! And figured in that fashion, its cost was so stupendous that
its purchase must be postponed and reconsidered pro and con at great
length.
Again there was the matter of his meals. He had for this period set
down the meager sum of fifty cents a day for food. That had seemed
small enough, but when one ate only two meals a day at very cheap
restaurants it was possible to cut down that figure. He could get a
breakfast of doughnuts and coffee for ten cents, and a dinner of hash
or spaghetti for thirty. The consideration of these items, and the
sense of saving occupied much of his time and thought.... And yet,
after a few days, when he came to balance his budget one evening,
he found that he had spent more money than he should have done. Two
dollars, or seventeen hours and a half, had vanished without trace....
And there were items he had not reckoned on--cigarettes he could do
without (he smoked a kind that went out, and he saved the stubs of
his last box and had a luxurious puff or two from one of those before
going to bed), but laundry was a necessity; and so, after butchering
his face with his last dull blade, was a new supply of blades for his
safety razor; though the soap on the washstand was as good for shaving,
he found, as what comes in a tube. And even the small item of carfare
seriously disarranged his estimates; at a minimum of ten cents a day
for three weeks, it shortened his time of security by nineteen hours.
And he had quite forgotten about having to pay for laundry.
In truth, he knew these estimates were an absurd folly; yet he spent
hours of time every evening going over his figures, working them out in
decimals. There was this comfort in his preposterous mathematics, that
it kept his mind precariously balanced on the edge of the abyss of fear
along which he seemed to walk. It was as if he must keep his eyes fixed
upon these figures, lest he should look down into that gulf and become
dizzy....
He did not go to see his child; he could not face the people
there--yet. He called up every evening, and Mrs. Case or Mrs. Czermak
reported that the baby was--of course--all right. Once it was Monica
who answered the telephone; in a queer, constrained voice she gave him
the information he wanted, and then, still in a reserved tone, thanked
him for the cuff-links. (He had forgotten them.) He explained that he
was very busy, but hoped to have time soon for a visit....
Every day that week he went to an advertising agency. There were only
two, besides the one from which he had been discharged, where he would
have cared to work; one of them he had gone to last Saturday, and the
other he held in reserve, going first to the smaller and negligible
ones. On Saturday morning he would go to McCullough’s, the one he was
holding in reserve.
That day he rose early, having bought an alarm clock at
last--recklessly paying seventy-nine cents for it. He indulged in the
luxury of having his shoes shined. He bought a newspaper, and read
about the preparations for the General Strike in England, and the
sports news, so as not to be too out of touch conversationally with the
outside world. Thus prepared, he went to McCullough’s.
Mr. McCullough himself was not in, but somebody in charge told him
flatly that there was no opening there just now for anybody....
That afternoon, when going into a cheap restaurant to brace himself
with another meal of doughnuts and coffee, he noticed a sign in the
window: “Dishwasher Wanted.” He went up to the man at the cashier’s
desk and asked about the job.
The man looked at him doubtfully and said: “I don’t think it’s the kind
of a job you want.”
“How much does it pay?” asked Norman.
“Go and see the boss. He’s in the back.”
“Whom shall I ask for?”
“Ask for the boss.”
Norman went back into the greasy, steaming kitchen.
“I want to see the boss,” he said to a fat man in an apron.
“I’m the boss. What do you want?”
“How about that dishwashing job?”
The man looked at him. “My God, what next?” he said disgustedly.
“Why, what’s the matter with me?” Norman asked.
“You’d last about an hour,” said the man.
“How much is the pay?” Norman demanded.
“Twelve dollars and meals. You have the day shift for two weeks and
then the night shift--seven to seven.”
Twelve dollars--and meals. That was enough for the baby. And he could
pawn his trunkful of clothes to pay for his room.
“I’ll take it,” he said.
“If you’re here at six-thirty to-morrow morning and nobody else has
turned up, I’ll try you out,” said the man.
“All right,” said Norman. “I’ll be here.”
“The hell you will,” said the man doubtfully.
As Norman went by the cashier’s desk the man there asked: “Get it?”
“I think so,” said Norman.
“Working for a paper?” asked the man. “Going to write us up?” And he
smiled knowingly.
Norman shook his head and went out. Why were they so suspicious of him?
Just because of his clothes? Well, a week’s dishwashing would change
that....
He would have no time to call up Mrs. Czermak to-night. He’d better
call up now.
Monica answered the telephone.
“Oh!” she said. “Dr. Zerneke wants very particularly to see you
to-night. She said to go to her home at ten o’clock. Yes, Junior’s all
right. When are you coming to see him?”
“Soon, I hope,” said Norman vaguely.
What did Dr. Zerneke want to see him about? Had she found out about his
losing his job?
Chapter XIII: The Dreamer Wakes
DR. ZERNEKE was not in when he arrived at her home at ten o’clock, and
he let himself in as before.
Waiting for her, he turned to the book-shelves. He caught the name
of Freud on the back of certain imposing volumes.... Ferenczi....
Flexner.... Frazer.... Fabre....
All very informative, no doubt.... Sanger.... Spencer and Gillen....
Stendhal’s _L’Amour_.... Stopes.... If he read all those large books,
he might understand his own situation better. But it was a little late
to begin his education. Perhaps a younger generation, that babbled of
sex and psychoanalysis instead of nursery rhymes, as it was reputed to
do, would find clear sailing. And maybe not. He had thought he knew
something, himself. He had had a smattering of modern ideas. He had
thought of himself as a liberal.
Goethe.... Godwin.... Groos.... Remy de Gourmont. Guyot’s _Breviare
de l’amour experimentale_.... All about sex, it seemed.... Janet....
James Joyce.... Ernest Jones.... Jung.... Kammerer.... Kempf.... Ellen
Key.... The Koran.... Krafft-Ebing.... An omnium gatherum of biology,
sociology, psychiatry, poetry, plays, and what not.... Adler.... Grant
Allen’s “The Woman Who Did”--a novel Norman vaguely remembered having
read in his ’teens; it was about a woman who deliberately and on theory
had an illegitimate child; the child, as Norman recalled, did not
thank her mother for conferring upon her that heroic but embarrassing
distinction.... Aretino.... The Apocrypha....
Norman took down the Apocrypha, and looking into it at random was
interested to see there the name Thecla. He had wondered who was the
St. Thecla for whom the Adoption Society was named. He would read the
Apocrypha some time and find out.... He put the book back at the sound
of some one coming up the stairs.
Dr. Zerneke entered, and greeted him cordially.
“Well, Mr. Overbeck,” she said, “I suppose you are feeling pretty good
about everything?”
Norman was disconcerted.
“What about?” he asked suspiciously. Was she making fun of him?
“Why, you have your son,” she said. “That hasn’t palled already, has
it?”
“Oh,” he said. “I thought--”
“You thought what?”
“I hadn’t intended to tell you,” he said. “But the fact is, I’ve lost
my job.”
“That’s too bad,” she said sympathetically. “As a matter of fact,” she
added, “I knew.”
“Oh’you did?”
“Yes. I happened to call up Wilkins and Freeman, and they said you
weren’t there any more.”
“Of course.... It was foolish to think I could keep it a secret.”
“You haven’t another yet, I suppose?”
“No,” he admitted. “I’ve been looking for another all week without any
success. I--I seem to have lost my nerve. I’m frightfully discouraged.
To tell the truth, I took a job of dishwashing to-day.”
“Dishwashing?”
“Yes. So as to keep up my payments to Mrs. Czermak, while I’m looking
for a real job.... Oh, things will turn out all right, I know, but this
week my prospects haven’t looked so cheerful. It was something of a
shock, losing that job at Wilkins and Freeman’s. And looking for a job
and being turned down every day--it’s hard to keep up one’s courage.”
“So now,” Dr. Zerneke commented, “you know how a good many other young
fathers feel. Well, it may be good for you.”
“It may take me, of course,” said Norman, “several weeks to find
another job.”
“Or several months, even,” said the doctor. “Do you know Mr. Victor, at
Mrs. Case’s rooming-house? He’s been out of work since New Year’s.”
“How do they keep up?”
“Some of them don’t. Others have a little money put by for hard times.
When you were a prosperous lawyer, didn’t you save anything?”
“I had a bank account, yes.”
“Why not draw on it, then?”
“It’s not really mine, any longer, since I’ve quit the firm.”
“Suit yourself. But I hope you’re not going to be silly.”
“I’ve broken with my life in Vickley. I’d rather stay broken--not go
back for help. Is that so foolish?”
“Are you engaged in some private quarrel with your father? Or are you
trying to make a career for yourself here in Chicago? If your son, when
he grows up, goes to New York to look for a job, don’t you think he
will need some money to live on before he gets started? Of course, you
can do dishwashing jobs in cheap restaurants if you want to. It may be
good for your soul. But I doubt it. I think you’re ashamed of having
lost your job.”
“Why shouldn’t I be?”
“Shame is a luxury no sensible person can afford. Do you want to stay
in the advertising business?”
“I do. Very much. That’s really what I’m afraid of--that I’ll have to
fall back on something else.”
“Would you consent to let me do you a favor?”
“Why not?”
“I thought you might be too proud. Well--first of all, how much money
have you in the bank at Vickley?”
“Of my own--something like a thousand dollars. I was going to spend it
on my honeymoon.”
“Write out a check for it and deposit it in some Chicago bank. How much
are you paying for your new room?”
“Four dollars a week.”
“Rent a small apartment. You can get one, furnished, for the summer, in
this neighborhood, for fifty or sixty dollars a month. Give my name as
a reference. You will need such a place to entertain your family in,
anyway. Do that Monday.”
“And what then?” Norman asked curiously.
“You are fond of buying pictures, aren’t you?”
“I’ve confined myself to etchings, chiefly. I have a small collection
of moderns in Vickley.”
“Send for them. Or go to the galleries and buy something new that
you’ll want to put on your walls. Do that on Tuesday. Also, go to a
department store and buy some cups and saucers or hangings that please
you. Do you dance?”
“Yes.”
“I will send you tickets for a ball next Wednesday, for which you will
please remit ten dollars. If you don’t find a girl to take, come alone,
and I’ll introduce you. It’s a masquerade, but evening clothes will do.”
“Is that all?” Norman asked grimly.
“Thursday I leave to your own devices. And on Friday go to see Mr.
McCullough, of the McCullough Advertising Agency, and ask for a job.”
“I was in there this morning. They haven’t got a job to give me.”
“They will probably have one next Friday.”
“Why should they have one next Friday?” he asked suspiciously.
“Because there is such a thing in this wicked world as ‘pull,’ and I
use unscrupulously the little I have for the benefit of my friends. How
do you suppose people get jobs?”
“But what do you know about my ability?”
“Nothing. After you get the job, it will be up to you to keep it.
That’s not my affair. All I promise you is a two weeks’ trial. But
it just happens that the last young man I rashly recommended to Mr.
McCullough turned out to be pretty good. If you’re a flop, I’ll merely
lose my reputation for intuition, that’s all. Only, if I were you, I’d
ask for sixty a week to start on. They’ll not respect you otherwise.
Remember that you’ve a baby to support.... And don’t, please, be angry
at me for keeping you from conquering the world by your own unaided
efforts.”
“I’ll be everlastingly grateful,” he said. “But--I thought poverty was
supposed to be an incentive. Evidently you don’t think so. Why should
you want me to pretend to myself that I’m rich?”
“Because you’ve always been well-to-do. You are, still, as a plain
matter of fact. Your poverty is a fake poverty--a neurotic lie, to
please yourself.”
“It didn’t feel so to me. It seemed real enough. And it wasn’t at all
pleasing!”
“It was an exercise of your imagination, nevertheless. A dream. I’ve
merely waked you up.”
“It was a nightmare,” he said.
“A grim little poetic fantasy. Write a poem about it, and send it to
the Daily Worker. It will all be true enough--for others. Not for you!
Be honest about this, if you can.”
“I admit I feel better than I did when I came in. But why--aside from
the job you’ve more or less promised me--why should the _facts_ seem
different now? Because they do!”
“You’re facing realities now. Not fighting shadows any more. The
question isn’t whether you can conquer the world with your bare hands.
It’s merely whether you can succeed in the advertising business. Maybe
you can’t, you know!”
Norman laughed, and thanked her warmly.
“Have you asked your mother to come to see you?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, the sooner the better.”
As Norman walked back to his room, he had a startling apprehension
of the fact that what she had said about keeping a job was a really
important truth.... There had perhaps been something grimly romantic
about the thought of washing dishes and pawning his clothes to pay that
twelve dollars a week for his son’s care. This problem of keeping
a job after it had been given him--there was, he knew, nothing very
romantic about that. It was a quite realistic problem that he had to
face now....
“Am I,” he wondered, “a perfectly incorrigible ass?”
If it would help to do the things that Dr. Zerneke advised--if it would
keep him from flying off on some preposterous new emotional tangent (he
had Monica’s kiss in mind) he would do as she said.
He would get an apartment.... And then he would ask his mother to
come....
BOOK THREE
The Dominant Sex
Chapter I: Vita Nova
HIS mother was coming. He had wired, inviting her, and she had wired
back the date of her arrival....
Ten days had passed since his talk with Dr. Zerneke, and in the
meantime he had done most of the things outlined in her program. He had
transferred his bank account to Chicago. He had rented a good-sized
furnished apartment on the North side for the summer. He had even,
according to instructions, picked up an etching, a satiric thing by
Peggy Bacon, and put it on the wall, to make the place more his own....
He had in other respects dutifully carried out Dr. Zerneke’s commands,
day by day. He had obediently gone to the dance for which she had sent
him tickets (he thought of taking Monica, but rejected that idea as
distinctly out of place); and rather to his surprise, he had found on
that occasion that he was capable of enjoying himself like anybody
else....
And finally, with some uneasiness and considerable doubt, he had
applied to Mr. McCullough for a job--and had been taken on at forty
dollars a week, which was all he had the nerve to ask.
He ought, he knew, to feel at ease now, in his comfortable apartment,
and with his new job. But he had lost his sense of security. His
experience of being out of a job had taught him something he could not
so quickly forget. Some time he might be able to feel again that the
world was made for him; but it seemed still a difficult and dangerous
place, and he a somewhat helpless stranger in it. He was determined
not to lose his new job. Never did a young man work at his tasks more
earnestly and humbly....
He had been to Mrs. Czermak’s to see his son twice in those ten
days--formal visits, different enough from the warm intimacy of his
former association with the family. He felt under constraint, and so
did the girls. Monica was distant and resentful, though she was rather
obviously wearing his present--the cuff-links.
Well, at any rate, he was being sensible. With his mother coming to see
him, he must not get involved in any more messes. But he felt a little
guilty about Monica.... It wasn’t quite the thing to do to kiss a girl
and then drop her cold....
When he was settled in his apartment, and at work on his new job, with
no further excuse for delay, he had wired his mother the invitation to
visit him. Her answering wire had said she would arrive Sunday morning;
and this had been followed by a letter, a friendly and casual letter,
taking everything as a matter of course. And Doris had scribbled a
postscript saying that she’d love to see the baby.... Lucinda, it
appeared, was still suffering from “nerves.” He gathered that she had
taken it all pretty hard....
And there had been a letter from Gilbert Rand, giving him the town
gossip. They were still talking about him in Vickley. Nothing like that
had ever happened there.... Considering everything, Norman thought it
was pretty sporting of his mother to be so calm and matter-of-fact
about it.
Nevertheless, with the approach of his mother’s visit, he began to
feel a sense of filial constraint. His new apartment was associated
with the thought of her visit: it was not so much his own place, as
one in which to entertain her. He felt that with her visit he would
lose the liberty he had gained in leaving home and coming to Chicago.
And he began to regret more keenly the pleasures of his stay at Mrs.
Czermak’s, and to recall the delightful details of that period--the
friendly midnight chats with old Mr. Victor, the morning coffee brought
by Monica, and the delightful half hours with the girls in the nursery.
Even Mrs. Case’s Rabelaisian conversation was something which he missed
with regret.... Mrs. Case had not felt any of the constraint which had
marked his visits since his departure from her roof; and last Sunday,
when he had seen his son bathed, she had in her frank way commented
upon one feature of the baby’s anatomy which is usually avoided in
polite conversation. “Ah!” she had said, addressing the baby, “little
do you know, young man, how much trouble you’re going to make in the
world with that!” A realist, she.... Norman grinned, remembering.
He had lived there only a week altogether. And he had been rather
longer than that installed here in his apartment. Yet that week
would always live in his memory, full of warmth and color and homely
sweetness. This week in his apartment had been merely barren.
Sitting there in his living room, he looked about with a vague
dissatisfaction. Polite comforts evidently did not suffice a man. The
fact was that he was lonely....
And his mother was coming in four days.
He really ought to make the best of those four days....
Chapter II: Waste Not Your Hour
YES, he was lonely, that was the trouble.
Dr. Zerneke had told him to make friends. But he had made friends
already, and had had to drop them....
Well, he must make some new friends.
He took out his memo-book, in which he had written the names, addresses
and telephone numbers of two girls he had met last week at that dance.
They had been very interesting girls. One of them was a field-worker
for some sort of agency which looked after delinquent children; she
had snapping black eyes and curly black hair, and she had talked very
interestingly about her work, in the intervals between dances. Her name
was Jennie Michaelson; a very intelligent girl, whom he had been eager
to know further. And she liked him. He wondered that he had let so long
a time slip by--more than a week--without calling her up. He looked at
his watch. It was only eight-thirty. She might be in from dinner, and
they could go to a restaurant and talk. She lived on the West side....
He hesitated, at the moment of going to the telephone, and sat there
in the big chair beneath the bridge-lamp, looking at his memo-book.
There was another new girl in it somewhere. Louise--he couldn’t
remember her last name: a fine, healthy, lovely blonde, and a wonderful
dancer. Yes--there she was: Louise Van Strohm. She was a student at
the University of Chicago, majoring in biology. It was her idea of
adventure to go around the world and down into deep seas seeing strange
and curious forms of life, like Will Beebe. She would, too, some time,
she said. She lived near the University. She was fond of music, and the
concerts in Jackson Park were commencing. She had mentioned it herself.
There was one to-night. Or they could go somewhere and dance--better
still! He looked at her ’phone number....
Again he hesitated, wondering whether what he most wanted to do
was talk or dance. If he wanted to talk, Jennie would be the more
interesting; if to dance, Louise danced like a dream. It was difficult
to decide which girl he most wanted to see to-night....
He sat there in his easy chair under the lamp, trying to decide between
Jennie and Louise.
The clock on the mantel chimed the hour of nine.
Of course, he had no assurance that either Jennie or Louise would be in
at this hour. Girls had other things to do with their evenings than sit
around in a furnished room waiting for the’phone to ring--especially
girls like these. It was no way to go about it, to call them up at that
hour. Girls had to be dated up beforehand. He’d be a fool to think he
could get them at a moment’s notice. In fact, he should have dated them
up for some evening there at the dance. By now they had forgotten all
about him. After all, if a man asked a girl for her telephone number,
and then didn’t call up for a week, she would naturally conclude that
he couldn’t be very much interested in continuing the acquaintance. It
would be rather embarrassing to call up now....
And if he did go to see one of these girls, what would he say to her?
A year ago, at college, he’d have known what to say. But he was a
thousand years older, now. Louise was twenty, Jennie twenty-two; Dr.
Zerneke had told him their ages. They were only kids. He didn’t know
how to get along with girls of that age any more....
To be sure, he had got along with them well enough that night at the
dance. But that was because of the stimulus of the music, the costumes,
and the drink or two that everybody had under his and her belt. But
to see these girls again in cold blood ... His spirit faltered at the
frightful difficulties of talking to a strange girl....
Well, no doubt it could be done. People did, somehow, get acquainted
with each other.... And his imagination flew on to envisage a time
when he and these girls might be better friends.... The trouble was,
it would be awkward to be always pretending to have a sick wife in
Colorado. Maybe they wouldn’t want to play around with a man who had
a sick wife in Colorado. Of course, he could be a recent widower, if
he preferred. Or a divorced man--one whose wife had run away: that was
near enough to the truth.... And he speculated upon just what Jennie
and Louise would think of a young divorced man with an infant child.
When they knew him better, they would ask to see the baby. Girls seemed
to be interested in babies--almost all girls. They might like him none
the worse for having a baby.... But there was the rub. He couldn’t ever
tell them the truth about that baby. There would be always an invisible
barrier, in his relations with them, from the very beginning. It would
spoil any friendship he might try to have with them.... Things would
come up in conversation about illegitimacy--things like that did come
up in conversation with girls nowadays!--and he would have to hide
his own thoughts. Because he couldn’t go around telling everybody his
story. And he would be ashamed of having to treat these girls as if
they were enemies from whom his thoughts must needs be concealed. Their
friendship would be a farce from the outset....
The clock chimed the half-hour.
It was really too late to call up those girls to-night. Besides, he
didn’t want to go out. He wasn’t in the mood for girls. He would stay
at home and read a book.
He went to the book-case, took one down at random, glanced through its
pages, and threw it aside. After a few restless turns up and down the
room he abruptly put on his hat.
It was too beautiful an evening to stay indoors. He would take a walk
in the park.
He found himself accidentally on the street where he had lived at Mrs.
Czermak’s.... He walked past the house, looking at the lighted windows.
His old room was dark. Had they rented it to somebody else yet? He
hadn’t asked, and they hadn’t told him.... The upstairs room, next to
the nursery, showed a glow of light at the edges of the curtains. That
was the girls’ room--Rose Czermak’s and Monica’s....
What did Monica think of him?
He turned, and walked back, on the other side of the street, looking at
the house.
He could make some inquiry about the baby, as an excuse for coming.
Yes, he hadn’t told them that his mother was coming. He ought to do
that. He halted.... No, it wouldn’t be very sensible to go to see them
in his present mood. Monica might be there. Better let well enough
alone.... He could telephone them about his mother.... He went on....
Walking through Lincoln Park, he reached the Lake front. The full white
moon was lifting itself out of the waters of the lake. He stood and
watched it....
What was Monica doing?
But he reminded himself that he was supposed to have a sick wife
in Colorado. Monica wouldn’t be thinking of him. Besides, to a girl
nowadays, a kiss meant nothing. She had doubtless forgotten all about
it.
And besides, his mother was coming in four days. He had best keep out
of trouble....
Chapter III: His Mother
IT was Saturday evening. His mother was coming in the morning. Norman
looked anxiously about his apartment, and spent an hour emptying
ash-trays, picking up cigarette stubs from the hearth, and getting his
bureau drawers in order. He found that he had forgotten to send off his
laundry this week. Well, he could buy some new shirts on Monday....
He sat down, seeing his apartment with his mother’s eyes. She would
probably find fault with the work of his cleaning-woman. She would
smile when she saw that bureau drawer full of bright chintz which he
had bought for curtains, forgetting that there was nobody he could ask
to sew them for him.... Mrs. Case, it was true, had asked if there was
anything they could do to help him get settled in his new place. But he
couldn’t have asked them to make his curtains....
He had telephoned Mrs. Czermak to let her know that his mother was
coming, and would probably be over to see the baby in the morning. The
news had seemed to upset her....
Well, there was nothing else to do to-night. He would read a while and
then go to bed and get some sleep. His mother was arriving on the
early train....
He had happened to see a copy of the Apocrypha in a bookshop window,
and had bought it out of curiosity, to see who St. Thecla was. But for
some absurd reason that apocryphal girl saint had reminded him in a
perverse way of Isabel. He did not want to be reminded of Isabel....
To-night he opened the book, read a little of the story of Thecla, and
fell to wondering about Isabel. She had been going to sail for France
on the eleventh. That was four days ago. (It was curious what a perfect
calendar his mind unconsciously was in these matters: it was four days
ago that he had bought this book, too.) Was she on shipboard now? Or
had she impatiently gone long before, and was she in Paris at this
moment?
Not that it made any difference to him....
But he had a queer troubled dream that night, in which both Isabel and
Monica figured--Isabel as a dim figure in the background, hiding her
face, and Monica, warm and near and dear, holding out her hands to him
appealingly....
The alarm clock sounded.... In an hour he must meet his mother at
the station. An hour. Then he could go on sleeping for five minutes
longer.... He wanted to finish that dream....
He was awakened by an insistent ringing of the door-bell, and
sprang up in confusion, looking at his watch. Good heavens!--he had
overslept nearly two hours.... Was that his mother now? He threw on a
dressing-gown and went to the door.
“Mother!” he cried out contritely.
“Good morning, Norman. You always were a sleepy-head.” She kissed him.
“It’s nice to see you, my boy.”
“And I didn’t meet you!” He seized her suitcase and packages. “How
awful of me! Come in!”
“That was all right,” she said. “What a nice place you have. As a
matter of fact, I was rather glad you didn’t come. I went over to see
the baby.”
“Oh! You did?”
“Yes. He’s a very nice baby, Norman. He looks exactly like you.”
“You--you liked him?”
“Of course. Now, Norman, go and have your bath and get dressed, and
I’ll get some breakfast.”
“I’m sorry, Mother--I’m afraid there’s not a thing in the house.”
“I brought everything. I stopped at a delicatessen. Go along, I’ll find
the kitchen. You’re still half asleep. You need a good cup of coffee.”
It wasn’t quite the way he had expected it to be.... But then, nothing
ever was, he reflected as he hurried through his bath and into his
clothes. She had simply and calmly walked in and taken possession....
“Are you almost ready?”
“Yes, Mother. In three minutes.”
He could smell the appetizing odors of bacon and coffee.
“All right. I’ll put the eggs in.”
That was just like her....
He felt half admiring and half resentful of such a mother.
Chapter IV: ’Ware Women
AT breakfast, when Mrs. Overbeck had satisfied herself that her son’s
stomach was being properly ministered to, they talked--Norman with
some caution and embarrassment, but she with apparent ease. It gave
Norman a queer feeling. One would not have thought from her manner that
there was anything unusual, let alone irregular, in his situation. She
inquired briefly and casually about Isabel (whom she referred to quite
familiarly by that name, instead of by any hostile circumlocutions),
and Norman was relieved to find that he need not make any further
explanation in regard to her. His mother appeared to take Isabel’s
going to Paris for granted.... She commented on Mrs. Case and her
daughters. “They seemed rather flustered at my visit,” she said. “They
are all very fond of the baby,” she added.
“Yes, they are,” he said.
“By the way,” she remarked, “they asked me something about your wife’s
health.”
To be sure--he hadn’t warned his mother of that protective fiction.
“Oh,” he said, “I’m supposed to be married, you know--on account of
the baby. I told them I had a sick wife in Colorado. You didn’t say
anything that would give me away, by any chance?”
“Why, no, I think not. I didn’t discuss you with them. I just pretended
not to notice the question, and went on talking about the baby. But you
might have told me, Norman. You didn’t write me anything. All I know is
what Dr. Zerneke has told me.”
“Oh--you’ve seen Dr. Zerneke too?”
“Not yet. I mean what she wrote to me.”
He might have known. Doubtless his mother and Dr. Zerneke had been
in correspondence about him all along. He seemed to sniff a maternal
conspiracy.
“What did she say about me?” he demanded.
“Oh, just that you were well, and about your work.”
“What did she say about my work?”
“She said you’d got a new job that paid more money. I was glad to hear
that. I didn’t see how you could live on thirty dollars a week in
Chicago.”
She hadn’t known, then, about his losing that other job. He felt
relieved.
“How is Lucinda?” he asked. He had already inquired about the other
members of the family.
“Well, you know how Lucinda gets--in a state of nerves over every
little thing. Her new puppy is lost.”
“What!”
“Yes, the new one she got from Schwartz’s. It just got out of the house
about ten days ago and disappeared.”
“I remember. It had a black spot or something.”
So Gilbert Rand was mistaken! It wasn’t concerned with him and his
baby, Lucinda’s state of nerves. Only her dog--of course....
“She’s thinking of coming on while I’m here.”
“No!” said Norman in helpless protest.
“Oh, well, you might as well let her, Norman. There’s plenty of room
here. And your baby will take her mind off her lost puppy.”
“Oh, then, by all means let’s have her,” said Norman ironically. “If my
baby can assuage her grief--!”
His irony was lost on his mother--as usual. “Yes,” she said, “I think
it would do her good.”
She had brought along her sewing-kit, and after breakfast sat down to
do the curtains, which she had somehow already discovered in his bureau.
“Now don’t let me interfere with your usual program,” she said. “Just
go ahead and do whatever you want to do. And don’t let me keep any of
your friends away.”
He didn’t like to tell her that he hadn’t made any friends.... Really,
he ought to bring somebody home, or she would think he was hiding them
from her.... He might bring Charlie Beckett here some evening. Charlie
was the only one at the office that he knew at all....
“I really don’t know many people yet,” he confessed. “I’ve been so
busy. I did get acquainted a little when I was living over at Mrs.
Czermak’s place--but that’s about all. And of course there’s Dr.
Zerneke. I’ve invited her to go out to dinner with us to-night, by the
way.”
“Yes, I’d like to meet her. And now go on out somewhere if you want to.
These curtains, and the dishes, will occupy me till dinner-time.”
“But I can’t have you washing my dishes, Mother,” said Norman,
scandalized.
“It won’t be the first time I’ve washed your dishes,” she said.
“I’ll do them myself,” he said. “You’re my guest.”
“Don’t be silly, Norman. Run along and leave me alone here for a while.”
And after some feeble protest, he did.... He went over to Mrs.
Czermak’s.
“Well,” he asked her, “what do you think of my mother?”
She looked at him in a frightened way.
“Tell me,” she begged, “is she going to take the baby away?”
“Take the baby away!” Norman echoed. “Why, of course not!” And then he
added, wonderingly: “I never thought of--such a thing.”
No, but now that he did think of it, it didn’t seem so impossible. If
she wanted to, she would be hard to stop.
“Why, did she say anything--when she was here?” he asked.
“It wasn’t what she said. But I’m afraid!” said Mrs. Czermak, and led
the way to the nursery. She lifted the sleeping child from his bed and
held him close in her arms. “I don’t want her to take him away!” she
said.
“Oh, well,” said Norman reassuringly, “I’m sure she hasn’t any such
idea.”
But that evening, at dinner with his mother and Dr. Zerneke in the
quiet restaurant he had selected, he was troubled by that thought....
Well, wasn’t it what he had once gone home to propose?--that she take
his child to raise!... Yes, but that was ages ago. It was the last
thing in the world that he wanted, now, to have his son brought up by
his family in Vickley.
He was a little shocked to realize how much he had changed his mind, in
the last six weeks....
And another thing, that evening at dinner, bothered him--the sense
that his mother and Dr. Zerneke were already too well acquainted--that
Dr. Zerneke was her friend and ally, rather than his.... There was an
air of implicit secret understanding between them--an understanding
concerning him.
What were these two women up to?
Yet it was the first time they had met, and they were of such different
kinds! They were only trying hard to be polite to one another. All they
had in common, after all, was a feminine conviction of his masculine
helplessness when it came to babies....
Chapter V: As Usual
WHEN Norman’s mother had been there less than a week, he had settled
down to a somewhat fretful but unprotesting acceptance of her presence.
She had got him an efficient cleaning woman; she had sewed buttons on
his shirts, and bought him a needed supply of socks and handkerchiefs.
She waked him in the morning to the kind of breakfast he had always had
at home. It was no use trying to regard her as a guest. She slipped
easily into the familiar, authoritative, useful and neglected rôle of
mother.... When Charlie Beckett, at the office, suggested to Norman
one day, as one bachelor to another, that they have dinner and go to a
musical comedy together that evening, he called up his mother and said
he wouldn’t be home till late--leaving her alone with no more thought
than if he had been at home in Vickley.
(One incident may be lightly touched upon. Norman was not much of
a drinking man, but in Charlie Beckett’s genial company, at the
place where Charlie took him to get some real old-fashioned beer
after the show, he drank enough to become rather tearily and beerily
confidential; though even then he presented his troubles in a somewhat
fictional disguise. “M’ wife ran away. Lef’ me with a baby. Nice little
kid, too!”--something like that, and so unlike Norman in his sober
senses that he preferred to forget it....)
His mother had written to Lucinda telling her she could come Saturday.
“Just for a few days,” she explained to Norman.... She herself had not
said how long she was going to stay; but on Monday she had brought
home from the station a second suitcase which she had checked there
on her arrival, and he guessed that she intended to remain at least a
fortnight. Well, there was nothing to complain of, surely, in this;
he had invited her to come--and he couldn’t say that she was in his
way. She did make him comfortable. Nevertheless her motherly presence
secretly and unreasonably irritated him. But that was no new thing,
either. He had been secretly irritated at her for the last several
years.... So that everything was much as it had always been.
Once, only, there flashed into his mind the curious tale that Gilbert
Rand had told him about his father. He hadn’t exactly doubted the
story--he had taken its truth for granted; but in a certain sense he
had not really believed it. How can one believe such things about one’s
parents? He wondered, now, if his mother had guessed what was going on?
And if she had guessed, had she sat there calmly, sewing buttons on her
husband’s shirts, knowing that he would get over what ailed him sooner
or later? Or had she never dreamed of such a thing? It was hard to make
his mother out--impossible, now, to tell what she knew or thought....
She saw the baby every day, and one evening they went together. If
her alien presence exercised a constraint on Mrs. Czermak and her
family, she appeared placidly unaware of it. She was friendly enough
with them; they were formal with her--still suspicious, it seemed, of
her intentions regarding the baby. Norman was ill at ease too, during
this visit.... And thereby occurred a second and still more disturbing
incident in Norman’s relations with Monica.
It was a rainy evening, late in the week, and he had’phoned for a taxi
to take them back home. As they were getting into the taxi, his mother
remembered that she had left her bag in the nursery; and he went back
to get it. Monica found it for him, and came down to the door with him.
It was the first time they had been alone together since that night
of the kiss, and they were both embarrassed. Doubtless it was this
embarrassment which provoked him to a silly speech. As they passed the
door of his old room, he remarked: “I suppose you’re bringing morning
coffee to somebody else now?”
She looked at him reproachfully, and they halted outside the room.
“Do you think so?” she said. She turned the knob. “See--it’s still
empty--waiting for you to come back.” And somehow or other they were
there together in that empty room, with the door slowly swinging shut
behind them. As it swung shut, the shadows closed in and obliterated
the light from the flickering gas-jet in the hall. In the darkness
Norman’s hand touched Monica’s hungrily. And this time he was not
surprised that next moment they were in one another’s arms.
No, he was not surprised. Monica no longer seemed to him a child. And
he knew that he wanted this--her arms about him, her kisses on his
mouth. He wanted it all so much that he couldn’t think of anything else
at the moment.
“Darling!” he whispered.
Then, in the darkness, she whispered to him: “I can’t stand it, Norman!
I want you too much! I don’t care if you _are_ married!...
“Now you know!” And her mouth passionately met his again.
“Do you want me?” she whispered.
And what could a young man answer but--
“Yes, of course I do!”
“Then come back and live with us again--and don’t let her take the baby
away!” she whispered pleadingly.
“We’ll talk about it later,” he said, half brought back to sanity by
this alien note ... half aware that this was all mad folly, until her
kiss dizzied his senses again....
“You must go, now, dear,” she said presently, pushing him gently out.
“Good Lord!” thought Norman, as he ran down to the waiting taxi.
Chapter VI: Night Thoughts
HE could not get to sleep for a long time.
Of course, he could not take Monica’s proposal seriously. They had both
been a little mad. She hadn’t known what she was saying. She didn’t
really mean it. He couldn’t take advantage of a young girl’s romantic
emotions. It would be simply too caddish.... The best thing to do would
be to ignore the incident. Yes, the next time they met he would just
behave as though nothing had happened. No doubt she would be grateful
and relieved....
This mood of chivalry lasted for perhaps three quarters of an hour,
when abruptly his thoughts took another turn. He had a sudden vision
of her looking at him with scornful eyes. Women didn’t appreciate that
kind of masculine chivalry. It would hurt her pride, and she would
despise him....
Well, what could he say to her? Not, after their kisses to-night, that
he didn’t really care for her that much.... It would be a lie....
Well, if he felt that way, why not take her up?
The trouble was that it was impracticable. He couldn’t go to live
there again. Mrs. Case would have something to say about that. She had
foreseen this very situation. A realistic mother, Mrs. Case.... No, it
wouldn’t do at all. Agreeable as Monica’s proposal was, as a young man
of the world he had to realize that it must be foregone....
To be sure, he had this apartment. And after his mother had gone back
to Vickley--
Yes, why not?
Monica, he told himself, was old enough to know what she was doing. He
wasn’t exactly seducing her. She had made the offer herself. And he
would be a fool to say no....
He played in imagination with the idea, and it was infinitely alluring.
Of course, he must not let Monica enter into this relationship with any
false romantic ideas of its seriousness. He would have to make it clear
to her that it was just--well, a temporary and passing sort of thing....
If Monica were older, and had had more experience in the ways of the
world, she would take all this for granted. But that was not the case.
And the thought of making these explanations to her was not very
pleasant.
As a matter of fact, it would all be terribly serious to her. She would
be committing a sin, for the sake of their love. Because she thought he
was a married man.... It was hardly fair to her....
But if he told her the truth, she would want him to marry her....
That, of course, was entirely out of the question. The deception
would have to be kept up--or else, for that idea didn’t please his
imagination, he would have to make clear to her why he didn’t want to
get married....
He could imagine her saying reproachfully: “You mean--you don’t want to
get married to _me_!”
Well, all right, take it that way. He supposed he would get married
some day. But he had no intention of doing so for a long time....
“But why don’t you want to marry me, Norman?”
What could he answer to that? He might say that this wasn’t really
love.... But she would indignantly deny that. And she would be right,
so far as she was concerned. It really was love, with her.... And
what was it with him? He remembered how he had walked up and down in
front of her house, wanting desperately to go in and see her.... If
he had felt that way about a young woman of his own social class,
would he have doubted whether it was love?... Yes--that was why he was
subjecting his emotions to so brutal an inquisition: because she was a
stenographer and the daughter of a woman who ran a rooming-house! That
was why he must not permit himself to think of this as love! Madness,
folly, a young man’s casual amusement, a convenience, a chance not to
be passed up--call it anything but love! But what was the truth?
He wanted her. He liked her. He was happy in her presence. He thought
about her all the time ... the curve of her mouth, the tilt of her
chin, the steady look out of her eyes, the way she tossed back her
bobbed hair, the smoothness of her arms, the poise of her young
body--he knew these charms by heart.... Wasn’t that love?
Oh, not so romantic and poetic as some sorts of love, perhaps. But it
was real. Oh, it was real enough!
And yet he didn’t want to marry her.
Well, and why didn’t he? Simply because she wasn’t the sort of girl he
had ever thought of marrying. Because she was a stenographer. Because
her mother ran a rooming-house. Because her family was poor. Because
she had none of the airs and graces of his own familiar middle-class
world.... And because he was an Overbeck of Vickley.
Perhaps it _was_ mere snobbishness.... But still--could he and a girl
of such a different background get along together as man and wife?
That, however, implied that he still belonged to Vickley. He reminded
himself that he had actually left all that sort of thing behind him. He
wasn’t his father’s son, any more. He could marry anybody he liked....
And what could be a more appropriate wife for a struggling young man
of uncertain prospects than a girl like Monica, able to take care of
herself and make the best of narrow circumstances? It wasn’t at all a
question of her fitting into his world, but of his fitting into hers!
And the answer to that seemed to be the fact that he had been very
happy living there at her house....
He hastily summoned up in his mind the differences between them.
Her lack of education.... He was interested in art and ideas, in
abstractions which she would never be able to understand.... Not,
indeed, that most girls cared much for art and ideas; but at least some
girls knew how to talk about them....
It did not seem to him, just now, to matter greatly. After all, one
did not marry a wife for the sake of intellectual conversation. And
Monica was no goose, either. She had a sensible little head on her
young shoulders. And her own struggle with poverty had taught her what
life was.... When she knew the truth about his child--she wouldn’t be
shocked....
His mother might not like such a match, but she would have to accept
it.... He was running his life to suit himself, not his family.... If
he and Monica could be happy together, what else mattered?
Abruptly there flashed into his mind what his friend Hal would say
about such a marriage. “_Nostalgia de la boue._” He had always chaffed
Norman with having a common, earthy streak in him--just because,
before he too had fallen under the spell of Hal’s ethereal inamorata,
he had entertained a sufficiently realistic college-boy passion for
a pretty young waitress in Boston.... Well, his affair with that
girl had probably been healthier than his and Hal’s mooning over that
art-struck vixen Isabel.... Homesickness for the mud? Possibly. If he
hadn’t been an Overbeck from Vickley, he’d probably have married that
waitress back in Cambridge. It was shame at finding that he couldn’t
take that affair as lightly as the young-gentlemanly code demanded,
that had made him break off with her. He had never told anybody but Hal
how he really felt about that girl; and Hal had only laughed at him.
But she had given him a taste of simple, earthy young love, reckless
and sweet; and it was the memory, somewhere in the back of his mind,
of her unhesitating and passionate surrender, that had made him so
afraid of Monica. Well, he had been his father’s son at Cambridge;
he couldn’t marry his waitress sweetheart. But he could marry Monica
now--if he was really free from Vickley. _Nostalgia de la boue?_ Say
rather homesickness for the honest, fragrant earth! In Isabel he had
had enough dealings with the unattainable stars; and in his Vickley
fiancée, with the middle region of respectable compromise....
Vickley would hear about his marriage with Monica, of course; and
Vickley would think it a final degradation. Vickley would take it as
his surrender of any hope of ever making good and coming back. Well,
let them! He did not want to go back to Vickley. And if marrying Monica
prevented that, so much the better!
There was nothing about Monica’s family that he really need be ashamed
of. They were self-respecting, hard-working people. He had liked them
all.... Something Dr. Zerneke had said, when she was scolding him, came
into his mind: “If one of those girls were your wife, your behavior
would be admirable.” Well, why shouldn’t Monica become his wife?
Yes, why not tell her the truth and ask her to marry him?
But he would rather wait until his mother had gone back to Vickley....
And it wasn’t a thing to be decided on impulse. He would take the rest
of the week to think it over....
A week to think it over.... And he fell asleep to dream of happiness in
Monica’s passionate young arms....
Chapter VII: A Letter
HE was unusually gay at breakfast, and went whistling to his office....
Of course, he must not tell Monica just yet; but he might manage a
reassuring touch or word when he went in the evening with his mother to
see the baby.... His imagination was busy with thoughts of their life
together....
But something happened that day to disturb the happy tenor of his
thoughts.
In the afternoon there was a telephone call from Dr. Zerneke.
“I’ve just had a letter from Isabel,” she said.
“From Paris?” he asked.
“No. From Michigan.”
“But I supposed she had sailed a week or more ago!”
“It seems that she hasn’t. And this letter concerns you. In fact,
it’s really intended for you. I’m sending it special delivery to your
apartment. It’s something you’ll probably want to discuss with your
mother.”
“But what in the world--?”
“You’ll find out when you read her letter.” And that was all she would
say.
What could Isabel have to say to him? She 256 An Unmarried Father
hadn’t decided that she wanted to keep the baby after all? Girls, he
knew, did sometimes change their minds about such things. But it was
too late--the baby was his, now. And it was going to stay his.
But he did not allow himself to think about it. He was working with
Charlie Beckett on the Pearson account--an important job--and it needed
all his attention. Charlie seemed to like his ideas....
“Here’s a letter for you,” said his mother, when he came home that
afternoon.
“Oh, thanks,” he said. “Something from Dr. Zerneke.”
He went into his room, tore open the envelope nervously, put aside Dr.
Zerneke’s accompanying note, and glanced rapidly through the sheets
covered with Isabel’s tiny handwriting.... But it was a long and prolix
letter, and this rapid survey told him nothing, so he dropped into
a comfortable chair, lighted a cigarette, and began it again at the
beginning in a more leisurely manner:
“Dear Dr. Martha--
“I’ve delayed my sailing for a few weeks, because I seem to need a
longer rest before my ocean trip. I should have taken your advice and
stayed another week in the hospital, I realize now. But I expect to be
all right in another week or so.
“In the meantime, since signing over the baby to Norman, I’ve had
plenty of time to think about it, and I feel that perhaps I ought
to make a suggestion. You will, of course, use your own discretion
in passing it on. If it’s out of place, please throw this in the
wastebasket and forget about it.
“I hadn’t, of course, realized that Norman was as much interested in
the baby as all that. When he didn’t come to see me at the hospital
any more, I thought he had gone back to Vickley and dropped the matter
entirely. It was really quite a shock to get those documents. I saw
that I had done him an injustice. (It really makes me a little ashamed
of my own lack of the proper parental instincts. Norman and my baby! It
seems very odd, and rather sweet. He will make a nice father.)
“I feel awkward about making my suggestion. Not knowing anything
about any other plans he may have, I can’t be sure my idea is not an
unwelcome impertinence. If the girl in Vickley, the one he was engaged
to, is going to marry him anyway and take the baby, then of course
you won’t say anything to him about this. But Roberta writes me that
he is living in Chicago now, so perhaps the Vickley engagement is all
off.--You see, I’m very much in the dark about it all. You didn’t tell
me anything; and I suppose it’s really none of my business. But it
occurs to me that it may be almost as embarrassing for a man to have an
illegitimate baby as for a girl. And I can’t forget that under those
circumstances he was generous and considerate enough to offer to marry
me. I appreciated the offer, but since I wasn’t going to keep the baby
there was no reason for accepting it. But now that he has the baby,
perhaps I ought to make him a similar offer. It would be, of course,
and you must make that clear to him, only a legal fiction for his and
the child’s benefit. I would go on to Paris immediately, and he could
divorce me for desertion; or if he wanted the divorce more quickly,
so as to marry somebody else, then I could get a divorce in Paris as
soon as I had established my residence there. And as a divorced man he
would be in a less awkward position about the baby. I only make it as a
suggestion.
“I tried to paint when I first got here, but gave it up. I shouldn’t
have attempted any work so soon. But it was a reaction from the
hospital atmosphere, and the sense of being a failure when my milk gave
out--I wanted to do something I was equal to doing. But I shall have
to wait a while longer--Art is off me for the present. The truth is, I
feel discouraged. But in Paris, I know, it will all come back.
“I keep wondering about Norman and the baby. I had no idea he was going
to be such a Tolstoian saint, and atone for the sin of his youth in
that fashion! And did his family throw him out when the scandal broke,
the way mine did? You might tell a fellow something about it all!
Anyway, if my suggestion should be accepted, I’ll be glad to stop in
Chicago for a day on my way to New York, and fix it up accordingly with
him.
“I’m not trying to thank you for all you’ve done for me--you and St.
Thecla. I’ll try to say it with paint in Paris. I hope Norman won’t
take too long to decide, so I can have it off my mind and go with an
easy conscience.
“Faithfully yours,
“Isabel Drury.”
Norman laid down the letter and whispered bitterly to himself:
“She can go to hell!”
Chapter VIII: A Sociological Interlude
DR. ZERNEKE had suggested that he would want to discuss this matter
with his mother. But that was just what he did not want to do.
“I’ve something to attend to,” he said. “Would you mind going to dinner
and to see the baby alone this evening?”
“Of course not. I’ll get myself a bite right here. Just run along.”
He hurried out, saying that he would be back late that evening.
He tried to get Dr. Zerneke on the telephone, but she was not in.
Probably she would be, he reflected, at ten o’clock. He would go around
to see her then.
He did not want to go back to his apartment. His mother would notice
his nervous manner, and wonder what was the matter. (Though she never
asked any questions--that was one comfort.)
He walked in Lincoln Park for an hour or two. What he felt like doing
was to sit down and write Isabel a cold and decisive rejection of her
proposal. He framed and re-framed that letter in his mind. In one of
the versions it went like this:
“Dear Isabel--Thank you for your kind offer. You had your own reasons
for rejecting mine, and I have mine for rejecting yours. I wish you
success in your artistic career. Sincerely yours.”
Another version ran: “Dear Isabel--I have no desire to be made
respectable. Your offer is declined.”
As a matter of fact, none of these versions were as epigrammatic as he
could have wished, or did anything like justice to his feelings.
He was, of course, at a disadvantage. She had not addressed him
directly. He might write an informal letter to Dr. Zerneke, and ask
her to send it on. It might begin: “Dear Dr. Zerneke--You tell me that
Isabel Drury has offered to marry me, in order to simplify matters in
regard to my child. Well, a great deal of water has flowed under the
bridge since I made a similar offer to her. In the meantime I have the
child, and the marital farce seems quite unnecessary.” Something as
casual and unemotional as that....
But he ought to talk to somebody before he wrote to her. Not his
mother--no. And Dr. Zerneke was the only other person he could talk to
about it.
Would she urge him--he wondered suddenly--to accept Isabel’s proposal?
For the sake of the child? That had been her reason for everything so
far. His own feelings were never considered in the least....
Of course, marriage with Isabel _would_ (along with his acknowledgment
of paternity) legitimate his son, according to the laws of the State
of Illinois. He knew that. He had looked it up at the Crerar library.
In California, subsequent marriage of the parents wasn’t necessary
for legitimation; the child would be legitimated simply by his taking
it into his home and treating it as if it were legitimate. In New
Mexico a process in court sufficed. In New York, on the other hand,
under English common law, subsequent marriage did not legitimate the
child--though perhaps the original relationship could be legally
construed as a common-law marriage. It was all helter-skelter and
ridiculous--like the divorce laws. But he happened to live in Illinois.
It _would_ make a difference.
He wondered why his father hadn’t suggested it.... He had known, of
course, that Isabel had refused. Had he taken that as final? It wasn’t
like him, to let anybody’s wishes stand in the way of what he thought
correct and proper. There must have been some other reason.... To be
sure, now that the scandal was out, marriage with Isabel wouldn’t make
the thing any more decent in the eyes of Vickley. But it would settle
the legitimacy question. His son could never be called a---- Norman
choked on the word even in his thoughts....
Irrelevantly and bitterly, he reflected that it might have been kinder
to his son to let him be adopted in the first place by some married
couple. He would never, then, have known the secret of his birth. He
would have considered himself the son of Mr. and Mrs.----whoever they
were....
But no, he would have found out, some time. And then he would always
have wondered who his real father was.... Yes, and his mother, too, of
course....
It occurred to Norman that he mustn’t let his son grow up with a
resentment against his mother for deserting him. A story would have to
be concocted that wouldn’t hurt his feelings.... Norman remembered what
Gilbert had said that time--about hypocrisy. Yes, that was the way it
started. Well, there was a good deal to be said for hypocrisy, after
all. It made things so much simpler.
He looked at his watch. He hadn’t had any dinner, and it was nearly
nine o’clock. That was silly. He would go and get something to eat.
But instead, he went to the Crerar library.
Some people, in their troubles, solace themselves with drink, others
with statistics.
Besides, Norman was a lawyer--or had been. What he had so far seen
of the legal attempts to deal with the problems of illegitimacy only
reënforced his secret contempt for Law. But in his recent reading he
had come across approving references to recent legislation in Norway
and Sweden, by which children born out of wedlock were given, entirely
or almost, the same rights as others. He was thumbing over the card
catalogue looking for information on this Scandinavian Utopia, when he
came upon the title: “Marriage Laws in Soviet Russia.”
“Well, let’s see how the Bolsheviks handle this thing,” he said to
himself, and turned in a slip for the pamphlet.
He glanced through its pages rapidly. Ah! Section 133. Note I.
“Children descending from parents who are not married have equal rights
with those descending from parents living in registered marriage.” He
read on. Section 140 required an unmarried woman who becomes pregnant
to give notice to the Bureau of Vital Statistics “not later than three
months before the birth of her child,” together with the name and
address of the father. Section 141 provided that upon receipt of the
notice, the Bureau should issue a citation upon the man named, who
would have two weeks in which to deny paternity. Further sections dealt
with the court inquiry by which paternity should be established. The
man held liable as father was to be held responsible for his share in
the expenses of gestation, delivery, and maintenance of the child....
Norman felt a little disappointed. This did not seem so frightfully
revolutionary. A court process to determine paternity was no new
thing in the history of the world. He remembered one in Vickley last
winter--he had gone to Magistrate Cooley’s court out of curiosity. A
girl had charged a neighboring storekeeper with being the father of her
child. Under cross-examination she broke down and confessed that it was
really not he but a young fellow out of a job. She wanted a father for
her child who could support it properly.... Norman wondered if things
like that happened in Soviet Russia. Human nature being what it was, he
didn’t see why not!
He turned the pages of the pamphlet idly, and his glance rested on this
passage: “160. Children have no right to the property of their parents,
nor parents to the property of their children. 161. Parents shall
be bound to provide board and maintenance for their minor children
and for children who are indigent and unable to work.” That reminded
him--in Soviet Russia, he had heard, there was a different kind of
economic system, which left nothing much for anybody to inherit. That,
of course, would simplify this whole matter of legitimacy. It was
in order to protect the inheritance rights of the legal family that
illegitimate children had been so cruelly penalized the world over. He
remembered a lecture to that effect at law school. And these Bolsheviks
weren’t concerned with defending property rights. That was the real
difference between Moscow and Vickley. If there weren’t any inheritance
rights involved, there wasn’t any reason to deny their human rights to
children born out of wedlock--nothing to make a fuss about at all!
But he wasn’t living in poverty-stricken and revolutionary Russia. He
was living in prosperous America, where the legal family had property
rights to be defended against the claims of bastards. That was, it
occurred to him, the real reason why he was now an outcast from Vickley
respectability. If men were permitted to do what he had done, what
would become of the Family, in its legal, sacred, property-inheriting
sense? It would mean red ruin and the breaking up of close-corporation
homes, to be sure.... And his father--Norman could appreciate now the
old man’s grim idealism--he was battling stubbornly against his own
respectable Vickley world, attempting to bring his grandson into that
close corporation in spite of a bar sinister....
“Board and maintenance”--that was all that Norman himself, set adrift
from family protection, could seriously hope to offer his son: that,
and his mere paternal love and companionship. He had no longer any
illusions about the possibility of any great success in the advertising
business--he would do well if he hung on to his job. And that was
all he really wanted to give the boy, if the truth were told--an
upbringing, and then freedom to make what he wanted to of his life!
But J. J. Overbeck could offer his grandson the prospect not merely
of a legal career, but of lordship in the small town of Vickley:
a snug income from rents, mortgages, government bonds, and steel
securities--and, with these, pride and power.
Which would the boy choose?
But at two months of age, the boy had no choice. Norman had to choose
for him.... He might make it easy for his father, by marrying Isabel
before she sailed for France. That, of course, was what Dr. Zerneke
would want him to do. For the child’s sake.
No!
He would be damned if he would marry that girl--to make his son one of
the little lords of Vickley.
He looked up at the library clock.
Five minutes of ten.
He would tell Dr. Zerneke that there were limits to what a father
should be asked to do.
Chapter IX: On Taking a Girl at Her Word
DR. ZERNEKE was in when he arrived, and the coffee was steaming.
“How is your mother enjoying her visit?” she asked, pouring him a cup.
“All right, I guess.” He drank his coffee at a gulp. “Well, I’ve read
Isabel’s letter....”
“Yes?”
“I want to know what you think.”
“What does your mother say?”
“I haven’t asked her.... And I’m not going to.”
Dr. Zerneke shrugged her shoulders. “I really don’t want to get mixed
up in this,” she said.
“But you can tell me what you think!”
“And be blamed afterwards....”
“I’ve got to talk it over with somebody!”
“There’s your mother,” she reminded him.
“But you know Isabel, and she doesn’t!”
“Well, the only thing I feel like advising you is--not to do anything
rash.”
“Such as what?”
“Such as taking Isabel at her word in a hurry, without having a chance
to think it all over.”
“You don’t want me to marry her?” he asked, in surprise.
“I don’t care whether you marry her or not. That’s entirely up to you.”
“I’m glad you feel that way about it,” he said. “I thought you’d say I
_ought_ to do it.”
His relief was so plain that she went on, with a smile: “We don’t
advise girls, in similar circumstances, to marry the fathers of their
children--not, I mean, just to be made respectable; I should think
the same considerations would apply to a man. After all, you’ve gone
through the worst of it, now.”
“Of course,” he said, “it isn’t just me. Marrying her would serve to
legitimate my son--and nothing else, in this state, will.”
“That doesn’t matter so much,” said Dr. Zerneke. “In fact, I don’t
think it matters at all, the way things have been arranged. It’s a mere
legal quibble. Socially speaking, an illegitimate child is one whose
father does not give him his name, support and protection. Your child
is very well provided for in all those respects. He’s merely lacking a
mother. But that is scarcely a reason for your marrying Isabel, when
there are other girls in the world.”
“Then what _would_ be a reason for my marrying her?” he asked.
“If you were in love with each other, that would be a fairly good
reason,” said Dr. Zerneke.
Norman laughed, a little grimly. “Then it’s entirely out of the
question,” he said. “Because we’re not. Not in the least. Besides, that
isn’t the proposition to be considered. She says very plainly in her
letter that it would be only a matter of legal form. A marital farce,
she calls it. We would never live together. She would go on to Paris,
and get a divorce.”
The argument was not going quite as he had expected. In fact, it was
almost as if he were arguing in favor of Isabel’s plan.
“You would be quite willing that it should be only a matter of form?”
Dr. Zerneke asked.
“I certainly shouldn’t think of trying to persuade her to make it a
real marriage--if _that’s_ what you mean!”
“You wouldn’t?”
“Of course not. We talked all that out, the time I went to see her at
the hospital. She doesn’t want to be a wife and mother.”
Dr. Zerneke opened a drawer and took out a sheet of paper. “I came
across the report of our psychiatrist on her,” she said, “and had some
of it copied. Would you like to see it? It might amuse you. We go about
these things in a very scientific fashion nowadays.”
He read the typewritten sheet.
_“Case H 15278. Unmarried mother who refuses to keep her child._
_“Report of Dr. A. B. Fishwanger, psychiatrist (extract):_
“Her feeling of hostility toward maternity is thus accounted for as a
repression of the psychic conflict originating in her father-complex,
and expressing itself in her artistic ambitions. She is convinced that
if she allowed herself to accept the full rôle of motherhood, she
would never get a chance to be an artist. Something might undoubtedly
be said for this view on strictly realistic grounds. But it would be
truer to say that if she allowed herself to become interested in her
child, she might stop wanting to be an artist. This is what she is
really afraid of. If her child had been born in wedlock, she would
probably have rebelled a little at her fate, and then settled down,
as the saying goes, and become a sufficiently devoted mother. But she
has deliberately managed the affair so as to keep what she calls her
freedom.
“A thorough analysis, lasting over several months, would probably be
required to resolve her psychic conflict, which appears to be of a
very deep-seated nature. (To this conflict is probably due, in view of
the absence of other findings, the premature drying up of her milk.) A
briefer analysis might have some considerable value, but on account of
the resistance of the subject even this is out of the question.”
“Can’t you imagine Isabel being interviewed by that psychiatrist?” said
Dr. Zerneke, smiling. “I must say I rather sympathize with her. Still,
it does throw some light on her psychology.”
“I suppose she was in a state of conflict about it,” said Norman.
“Still, she made up her mind. You don’t think anything has happened to
change it?”
“I think she’s probably in a very difficult situation just now.
Undoubtedly she is finding out that she is more of a woman than she was
willing to admit. Having a baby does something like that--it starts
all the glandular secretions that create tenderness and devotion.
She’s done her best to fight those feelings down, but they’re there.
She can’t escape them. After all, it’s nothing unusual. Sometimes
girls think beforehand that they are going to hate their illegitimate
babies--but they generally don’t. And it’s quite the ordinary thing for
a girl who has given her baby away to be sorry she’s done it.”
“But she doesn’t say she’s sorry,” Norman objected.
“I think that might possibly be read between the lines.”
“It never occurred to me. You think she wants her baby?”
“I can’t pretend to speak for her. But that might be one explanation of
her offer.”
“Not if she were going on to Paris,” said Norman.
“She might not go on to Paris, then.”
“But she says definitely that she would!”
“No doubt she means it. But how do you know what would happen to you
two young people after you get married? You both have families. They
would have something to say about it. You might find yourselves boxed
up in a house together the rest of your lives. That’s why I suggest
that you think twice about marrying her.”
“I see what you mean. But if I went up to Michigan and we were quietly
married there--who would know about it?”
“All the newspapers in the United States, I expect. And your mother is
here, as you seem to forget. You couldn’t marry without telling her.”
“I could make some business excuse for my trip to Michigan. She
wouldn’t know till it was all over, and Isabel on the boat. Then it
would be too late for our families to interfere.”
“Do as you please. But don’t expect me to be surprised if Isabel comes
back with you from Michigan to meet your mother.”
“Aren’t you rather cynical, Dr. Zerneke? I think I could trust her. I’m
sure of it.”
“I’m not suggesting that she has any intention of double-crossing you.
That’s not the point. If she came back with you it would be because you
had invited her to.”
“But why should I do that?” he asked coldly.
“You were in love with her once. And she’s your child’s mother. It
would be the most natural thing in the world.”
“You really think she’d stay with me if I asked her?”
“Do you really want her to stay? Then the only way to find out is to
ask her. If that’s what you want.”
“It wouldn’t really mean giving up her career,” said Norman
reflectively. “There would be time enough for that, later.”
“It would be a decisive step, for her. I doubt if she’ll have any
career, if she marries you now. But that is her own lookout. It’s
nothing for you to worry about--except as it might mean having a
discontented wife on your hands in Vickley.”
“Why in Vickley?”
“Can you support a wife on your present job?”
“I suppose not. She’d have to work.”
“Has she ever done any work?”
“You don’t think I ought to marry her?”
“I’m not trying to run your affairs for you, Norman. But I think you
ought to understand what you may be getting into. Isabel is probably
feeling much more like a mother than an artist, just now. If you want
to capture her, this is undoubtedly your chance. And in justice to her,
I don’t think you ought to accept her offer unless you are willing to
urge her to make it a real marriage. But that is not a thing you can do
out of mere generosity to her--nor is it really necessary to do because
of the child. It all depends on how you feel about her. Do you want her
as your wife?--That’s the real question, Norman. I don’t know how you
feel about that.”
Norman rose and walked up and down the room. “All this is new to me,”
he said. “I can’t quite believe it.”
“Take your time and think it over. Talk to your mother about it.”
“That would mean taking the whole family into my confidence. I don’t
want any more family conferences. And besides, it’s something that
can’t be delayed indefinitely.”
“She won’t go till she hears from you. I repeat that the only question
is, do you want her for a wife?”
Norman kept on walking back and forth unhappily.
“She’s treated me atrociously,” he said.
The doctor smiled. “Now you’ll have a chance to revenge yourself--by
marrying her.”
He paid no attention to that remark. “She doesn’t deserve to ever see
her baby again,” he said bitterly.
And, after a moment:
“I ought to hate her!”
“And instead, it seems, you still love her?”
“Yes--damn her!”
Dr. Zerneke laughed.
“You think it’s funny, do you?” Norman said indignantly.
“Promise me this,” said Dr. Zerneke, “that you’ll take a week to think
it over.”
“A week?”
Something clicked in his memory. He realized that he had been going to
take a week to think about marrying Monica....
“Yes. Suppose you postpone your decision till next Saturday--or Sunday.
And then tell me what you’ve decided.”
“All right,” he said meekly.
“Till next Sunday, then.”
Chapter X: Which?
HE walked in Lincoln Park for a while before going home.
That damned letter from Isabel! Of course it had upset him....
Anyway, he oughtn’t to put any confidence in Dr. Zerneke’s guesses as
to Isabel’s feelings about marriage. He knew Isabel as well as Dr.
Zerneke did--better! She was incapable of being in love with anybody
or anything except her art. She meant just what she had said in her
letter. If he married her, it would be a mere formality for the child’s
benefit. Nothing more. Why should he suppose the marriage would mean
more to her? She had expressed herself plainly enough in her letter.
Why should he give her an opportunity to insult him again?
She might be a little discouraged about her art just now--but it was
all she really cared anything about. She wasn’t human. She wasn’t a
woman at all. She was what Hal had said about her in a poem--she was a
pixie ... or a leafy shadow in the spring moonlight that seemed like a
girl until one tried to clasp it in one’s arms....
Monica was real. Monica was a true flesh-and-blood girl. Monica could
love....
Why was he condemned still to be haunted by this ghost of his lost
youth? Why couldn’t he forget her? Why wouldn’t she let him forget
her? How like her this letter was!--in offering a stone for bread....
Even if in the discouragement of the moment she should agree to
try being his wife, that would mean nothing. That marriage would
be foredoomed to failure. She had said it herself, that day in the
hospital. She would never really belong to him. He would be clasping
her body, but her thoughts, her soul, would be far away, in a world he
could not enter.... They would come to hate each other....
Unless--unless what Dr. Zerneke said about her was true....
But it wasn’t true. He knew better than to believe that....
It wasn’t quite fair to Monica--to think of marrying her with that
ghost hovering in the background....
And if he were going to moon over Isabel all his life, he might as well
marry her and be done with it....
Perhaps he was so cursed that he would rather be miserable with Isabel
than happy with Monica....
He would have to give her an answer, one way or the other, soon. If he
said “no,” he might regret it all his life....
If he said “yes,” he was throwing himself into a whirlpool of doubt and
misery....
But he didn’t have to decide right now. He ought to get some sleep. He
had a job to go to in the morning.
He entered the apartment quietly, so as not to wake his mother. But she
came to his door in a dressing-gown, holding out a telegram.
“Lucinda’s done such a fool thing,” she said. “Look at this! And I
don’t want you to think it’s my fault, because it’s not.”
He took the telegram. It read:
MADGE COMING TO CHICAGO WITH ME TO DO SHOPPING WILL BE AT ANNEX
“Madge!” he said in astonishment. “And with Lucinda?”
“Oh, yes--they’re great friends now. You know the way Lucinda is. But
she ought to have more sense than to bring Madge with her. And Madge
ought to have more sense than to come.”
“Well,” said Norman, “I don’t expect Madge to stay away from Chicago on
my account. Why shouldn’t she come with Lucinda, if she wants to?”
“You know perfectly well why,” said his mother. “The shopping is only
an excuse. Lucinda will take her to see the baby, and then somehow or
other you’ll run into her.”
“Well, what of it?” said Norman irritably. “Why shouldn’t we meet?”
“Don’t talk like a fool, Norman. You know that girl’s still in love
with you!”
“No, I didn’t,” said Norman, disconcerted. “Is she, really?”
His mother did not consider that worth a reply.
She went back to her room, saying as she went:
“Well, don’t blame me, is all I say!”
“Good Lord!” said Norman helplessly.
Chapter XI: As Luck Would Have It
A YOUNG man may expend anguished thought upon the question of which of
two girls he ought to marry; but a third claimant breaks the spell of
that dilemma. He no longer feels the sense of having to make a painful
choice; his feeling is rather a bewildering one of having no choice at
all. He loses in imagination the position of embarrassing masculine
jurisdiction over the fate and happiness of the girls, and begins to
feel a little like a hunted animal.
Abruptly, when left alone by his mother, the color of the whole
situation changed for Norman. He felt as though a horde of women
were closing in upon him. It was not a dignified situation, and in
self-defense he felt a burst of resentment against them all.
What right had they to make demands upon him? They weren’t any of them
in love with him, really. It was their damned maternal instinct. Even
Monica had talked about the baby in the midst of their love-making....
Everybody seemed to think that a man with a baby had to have a wife....
Well, he would show them....
He fell asleep in a mood of profound hostility to all womankind, and
when he awoke it was with the grim resolve not to be bullied into
marrying anybody.
That Saturday afternoon, when he came back from lunch, there was a note
on his desk. He knew when he saw it afar what it would say. That Mr.
McCullough wished to see him.... And it did.... “Fired again!” thought
Norman.
He wasn’t surprised; he had thought he was doing damn good work on
that Pearson account; but evidently McCullough knew better.... And it
was just the time when a thing like this would happen, with his mother
and sister looking on. He couldn’t keep it a secret from Vickley this
time....
But there was just one good thing about it: if he lost his job and
became a bum on a park bench, maybe these women would let him alone....
It would be a good excuse; he wouldn’t have to marry anybody.... Norman
brightened, and went in cheerfully to get the ax from Mr. McCullough.
But Mr. McCullough, as he somewhat gradually and rather incredulously
discovered, had not sent for him in order to fire him--only to tell
him that he seemed to be getting along pretty well, and that he could
consider himself a regular member of the staff from now on. “Your
salary check will be for seventy-five this week,” Mr. McCullough added
casually. “And you can go on working with Charlie Beckett on the
Pearson account.”
“Thank you, Mr. McCullough,” said Norman, gulping down his emotions....
Of course, one couldn’t be sorry that one hadn’t been fired.... But
it took away his one avenue of escape from the embarrassing situation
in which he found himself. It left him with no good excuse to make to
those three girls....
Those three girls--that was the way he put it in his conscious
thoughts. But in reality it was only one of them that he had in mind.
Isabel would not care--he knew that well enough. And reckless little
Monica--she had offered her love and demanded nothing.... It was Madge
that he was afraid of. Madge--and Vickley.
Chapter XII: The Fugitive
AS for Madge, he was determined to keep out of her way while she was in
Chicago....
Lucinda was at the apartment with his mother when he came home that
afternoon. She had been taken to see the baby, and she expressed
herself enthusiastically. Norman couldn’t help being touched. He had
never heard her talk that way even about one of her pet dogs.... He was
on the alert to ignore any reference she might make to Madge.... But
she said nothing about Madge.
At last, in impatience, he remarked: “I understood Madge was coming to
Chicago with you.”
“Oh, yes,” said Lucinda, and went on talking about the baby.
Had Madge seen the baby? He was curious to know, but he was determined
not to ask....
Doubtless it was the part of a brother to show his sister about
Chicago--take her to dinner and the theater, and so on. But when she
had been so indiscreet as to come companioned by a girl he did not want
to see, she would have to go without these brotherly attentions. He
would let her look after herself.
Lucinda seemed not to notice that she was being neglected.... After
all, she had been in Chicago before; and she was accustomed to Norman’s
brotherly indifference.
But Norman suspected a plot. How could he not suspect it? Lucinda’s
friendship with Madge, her bringing Madge to Chicago--doubtless she
hoped to bring about a reconciliation. His mother, in spite of her
protests, might be in on it. And so might even Dr. Zerneke. They all
thought of him as a helpless male who needed a wife. It was all very
well-meant--but he’d thank them just to leave him alone....
To block any plans they might have for an “accidental” meeting at Mrs.
Czermak’s, he invented business engagements for all his evenings which
would prevent his going there to see the baby this week. (And besides,
he didn’t want to face Monica, either.) And with the idea that Madge
might be at the apartment with Lucinda when he came home, he stayed
away every night until very late.... At least, he did this until
Saturday; and that evening, having found nothing better to do than sit
in the Crerar library, he revolted. After all, his apartment belonged
to him. It was rather absurd for him to be kept out of it that way. He
went home.
All the week he had been having, in his thoughts of Madge, the same
experience which he had had so often since his life ran off the smooth
track of custom and habit into the jungle of uncertainty in which he
had to find out for himself what things were like--the experience
of seeing facts change their appearance before his eyes.... In this
changing and surprising world, his feeling about Madge had remained
fixed until now. He had been sorry to have hurt her--but glad
nevertheless to have escaped from that marriage, because of what it
would have meant. And now that certainty was being undermined. Since
Madge had come to Chicago, he was remembering things about her--no, not
things to make him regret that she had thrown him over, nothing to make
him think himself still in love with her--nothing like that: yet sweet
and brave and tender and funny little things, making of her a human
girl and not a graven image of conventionality, an algebraic formula
of bourgeois marriage. And in merely becoming in his imagination a
person rather than a formula, she had upset him dreadfully--more than
he was willing to admit to himself. For his campaign of life in Chicago
was based implicitly upon an obscure but profound conviction that it
represented a revolt against a system of respectability and hypocrisy.
He wasn’t a theorist, and he couldn’t, or wouldn’t have wished to,
put it in words. But there it was. And that obscure theory gave him
courage and faith. But if it was not against the rock-walled citadel
of Respectability that he had dealt his clumsy and cruel blows, but
against the naked and defenseless breast of a girl--a girl who happened
to be in love with him--then some of the meaning went out of his whole
brave adventure. He didn’t want to face that possibility. He had
tried to put aside these inconvenient and unsettling memories. But he
wondered more and more what Madge was really like. Perhaps he would
never be sure until he saw and talked with her again.
Anyway, what was there to be afraid of? If she was at his apartment
this evening, well and good. He would find out what that respectable
young woman to whom he had once been engaged to be married was really
like....
But there was no one at the apartment.
He waited impatiently for his mother to come home.
She came at last, with Lucinda. They had been to the theater, they
said. They did not mention Madge. But he knew quite well she had been
with them. She must have gone on to the hotel alone to avoid meeting
him. These elaborate evasions were rather silly, he thought....
Lucinda, in her exasperating fashion, got started on an account of the
musical comedy they had seen, and could not be stopped until she had
described it all. It was the same one Norman had seen the week before
with Charlie Beckett. He heard her wearily to the end--noting that she
had picked up some slangy terms of speech from Doris--and when she
started to go, he said: “I’ll take you to your hotel.”
She seemed surprised at this offer--and indeed it was a trifle unusual
for Norman voluntarily to act as her escort. “Oh, you needn’t bother,”
she said. “I can get a bus over on the Avenue.”
“I’ll take you,” said Norman firmly.
Chapter XIII: Conversation in a Taxi
IN the taxi he tried hard to think of something to talk about to his
sister. He couldn’t seem to think of anything at all to say.
They were going down Michigan Avenue. In another minute or two they
would be at her hotel.
“Has Madge seen the baby?” he asked abruptly.
“Oh, yes,” said Lucinda. “She saw it the first thing.”
“One look was enough, I suppose,” said Norman bitterly.
“Oh, no,” said Lucinda. “She goes with us every day.”
“Oh,” said Norman. “She does?”
“There’s no reason,” said Lucinda, “why she should bear a grudge
against the baby.”
“I suppose not,” said Norman. “I’m the only one to blame. Of course,
I couldn’t exactly help it--the way I treated her.... I had hoped she
might understand that--and forgive me a little.”
Lucinda said nothing.
“Perhaps,” said Norman, “I ought to see her.”
“I don’t know,” said Lucinda doubtfully. “Tell me, Norman--have you
been carrying on with that little Monica Case?”
“Why in the world should you think that?” asked Norman indignantly.
“Well, she wears your jade cuff-buttons, and turns all colors when your
name is mentioned.”
“And what of it?” Norman asked defiantly.
“Nothing. That’s just the sort of girl you _would_ get mixed up with,”
said Lucinda. “Your tastes always were rather vulgar, Norman.”
“We were speaking of Madge, I believe,” said Norman haughtily.
“Well, that’s just it. I don’t think it’s very nice for Madge.”
“I’m sorry,” said Norman, “but I can’t regulate my conduct to suit my
ex-fiancée--or you either. Why did you bring Madge to Chicago?”
“I didn’t bring her,” said Lucinda. “But I knew she wanted to see the
baby--and I thought it might help her to get over it all.”
“You’re lying, Lucinda,” he said. “You know you want Madge and me to
make up. And so does Mother.”
“Well,” said Lucinda, “I think we’d all rather you’d marry Madge
than--that other girl.”
“What other girl?”
“The one who--deserted the baby. You don’t suppose I think you’d marry
Monica Case, do you?” she added impersonally.
“Why should I marry at all?” he demanded.
“Oh, you’ll have to marry _somebody_. Because of the baby, you know.”
He smiled. “And why not the baby’s mother, then?” he asked curiously.
“Oh, Norman--that _would_ be the absolute limit! After the way she’s
treated you! You wouldn’t be a--a doormat!” she said scornfully.
“Anyway,” he said, “there’s no reason why Madge and I shouldn’t
understand one another. I’ve no wish to hurt her feelings wantonly.”
“Well, you can’t see her to-night,” said Lucinda. “She’s gone to bed by
now. She went on to the hotel so as not to see you.”
“I think it’s rather ridiculous,” said Norman, “all this artificial
avoidance. Suppose you bring her over to the apartment for breakfast.
About eleven. Will you?”
“I’ll ask her,” said Lucinda.
“Do.”
The taxi stopped at the hotel.
“I’ve told Lucinda to bring Madge around for Sunday breakfast,” he said
casually to his mother, who was still puttering about the apartment
when he returned.
She frowned--in disapproval, Norman thought. But what she said was
only: “I wonder if there are enough eggs.”
She went into the kitchen, and came back. “Yes, there’s plenty of
everything,” she said.
If she saw any dramatic crisis imminent in her son’s life, she gave no
sign of it....
Chapter XIV: A Farewell
WHEN his mother had gone to bed, Norman sat up smoking and thinking.
So Lucinda--and Vickley in general, no doubt--thought he ought not to
marry Isabel!
Well, perhaps Vickley was right, at that.
Why should she be given another chance? Why should she be allowed to
have the son she had deserted?
“No, by God--he’s mine!” thought Norman, rocked with an emotion of
jealous hatred.
He went to bed. But presently he got up and turned on the light and
brought back to bed with him the Apocrypha he had picked up. He turned
to the story of Thecla.... This apocryphal girl saint was to him a
queer parable. When he had first read its opening sentences he had been
reminded of something Isabel had told him that day in the hospital--how
she had broken her engagement, at eighteen, for the love of art.... St.
Thecla here in the Apocrypha had broken hers for the love of God.... It
was all different enough and yet as he read it had seemed to him that
Isabel’s rebellious career was a queer, perverse, modern echo of that
old tale. For “the gospel of Paul” one need only put “the gospel of
Modern Art.”
He read it again, now, to allay his hatred of Isabel. For when he
thought of Isabel, it was with love or hatred, and both were torments.
He was safer in hating her, safer from the danger of more pain; but
hating her hurt him. And in this parable he found something to make him
sorry for her....
The story he read told of how when Paul was preaching in Iconium a girl
named Thecla, who was betrothed to a young man named Thamyris, sat in
the window of her mother’s house and listened to this new gospel; nor
would she depart from the window. And her mother, when she could not be
prevailed upon, sent for Thamyris, who came with exceeding pleasure, as
hoping now to marry her. He said to her mother, “Where is my Thecla?”
Her mother replied: “Thamyris, I have a strange thing to tell you. For
the space of three days my daughter has not moved from the window, not
so much as to eat or drink, but is intent on hearing the artful and
delusive discourses of a certain foreigner. Thamyris, this stranger
causes trouble throughout the whole city of the Iconians, for the
young men and girls listen to him and will not marry. And my daughter
too, caught as in a spider’s web at the window, is possessed by a new
desire and a fearful passion. But go you and speak to her, for she is
betrothed to you.”
And Thamyris went to her, desiring her, and yet alarmed because of her
strange ecstasy, and said: “Thecla, why do you sit thus? What strange
passion holds you in its power? Turn to your Thamyris and be ashamed
of yourself!” And her mother likewise: “Thecla, why do you look down
and answer nothing, as if you had lost your wits?” And they mourned,
Thamyris for his betrothed and her mother for her child, and Thecla
paid no heed to them but listened only the while to the new gospel.
And Thamyris leapt up and went away ... and brought officers with
staves to arrest Paul, and had him led to the proconsul, saying: “This
is the stranger who keeps girls from marrying.” And Paul was taken to
prison.
But Thecla that night took off her bracelets and gave them to the
doorkeeper and went into the prison and sat at Paul’s feet and listened
to his words, and kissed his chains.
And they were brought before the governor, who asked: “Thecla, why will
you not marry Thamyris, according to the law of the Iconians?” But she
looked only upon Paul and answered not, and her own mother cried: “Burn
the lawless one, burn her that will not be a bride, so that the women
of Iconium may be made afraid to follow these new teachings!”
And she was brought naked to the stake, but God had compassion on her,
and sent a rain to quench the fire. And she was set free, and went to
Paul and said: “I will cut my hair, and follow you wherever you go.”
But he said: “The time is ill-favored, and you are comely. I fear a
harder trial may come, which you will not be able to withstand.”
But she cut her hair and went with him to Antioch. And there a
magistrate named Alexander saw her and was enamored of her, and sent
Paul presents....
(Norman thought: “I became interested in pictures just to please
Isabel.”...)
But Paul said: “I know not this woman of whom you speak, neither does
she belong to me.”
And Alexander seized her in the street, but she rent his cloak and took
the wreath from his head, and made him a laughing-stock before the
whole town....
“That’s me,” thought Norman.
He did not go on to read the rest of Thecla’s triumphant career. He
stopped there with poor Alexander, who had been made a laughing-stock
before the whole town.
Nobody, he reflected, would ever write the inglorious story of
Alexander. The sympathies of storytellers were always with the girl.
Not, to be sure, precisely with a girl like Isabel, though. They didn’t
understand a girl’s being faithful to her art, in spite of a moonstruck
moment in the woods--in spite of having a baby at her breast--in spite
of confusion, complications, tormented and conflicting emotions.
Legend, if she became famous, would simplify her story; and he alone
would know what a troubled soul she had been....
She was waiting now for her answer. She was trusting him to decide
her life for her. Too tired, sick, discouraged, to know any more what
she wanted, she was leaving it to him to say whether she should be an
artist or a mother. He could take her in this moment of weakness. But
he would never be content with what she had to give....
No, he would trouble her no more with his human demands for love. He’d
let her go on to her own destiny....
It seemed to him that he had forgiven her. At least, he did not hate
her now. And if he still, in a way loved her, yet he did not want
her for his own. He had let her go. She was remote, now, in his
imagination, above the reach of desire, shining from the abode where
things that seem eternal find refuge.... And at the same time, it
seemed to him that he had put aside his youth for ever.
Chapter XV: The Inevitable
SUNDAY morning dawned for Norman--if it could be said to dawn at about
ten o’clock--with a sense of fatality. At first he didn’t know why.
He lay in bed, hearing his mother stirring in the kitchen. Then he
remembered. She was getting breakfast for Madge. Madge was coming....
Suddenly in his imagination he saw the two of them left alone together.
She would reproach him. Well, she had a right to. And he would feel
sorry and ashamed. But he would defend himself--he would try to make
her understand. It would be like one of their old-time quarrels. For
they had quarreled--and made up. They had kissed and made up, always,
and everything had seemed all right again....
Well, perhaps it was inevitable. Everybody seemed to think he had to
have a wife. Lucinda had said so. Dr. Zerneke had said so. His mother
had as good as said so. A man with a baby was helpless.... And if Madge
would marry him....
He turned, as if for the last time, to the thought of Monica....
Reckless little Monica--the rooming house--old Mr. Victor--the homely
maternal airs of Mrs. Czermak--the Rabelaisian conversation of Mrs.
Case.... He sighed. He knew now that those things weren’t for him....
He rose to face the day and what might come of it.... After all, Madge
would be a damned sight nicer wife than he deserved....
Breakfast was getting ready. He walked slowly back and forth.
The bell rang. He went to the door.
Lucinda was there, alone.
“Where’s Madge?” he asked.
“She wouldn’t come,” said Lucinda. “She’s very much upset. I left her
at the hotel, packing to go back to Vickley.”
“I’ll go and get her,” said Norman.
“Wait. She wrote this to you last night.”
He took the letter and walked out.
Lucinda ran to the banister and called down to him. “The room is
314--you’d better go right up, Norman, if you want to see her!”
In the street he opened the envelope, stopped short on the corner, and
read:
“Dear Norman Overbeck: I came to see your child, not to see you.
Perhaps it was foolish of me to come; but I wanted to, and I’m not
sorry I did. And I can tell you better in a letter how I feel about
you, without seeing you.
“I don’t blame you for what happened. I mean, about the baby. I love
your baby. But you weren’t fair to me. You never told me about the
other girl. It wasn’t fair to ask me to marry you when you were still
in love with her. But I could forgive that, because maybe you didn’t
know and thought you were over it. That isn’t what hurts most.
“What hurts is that you should not have trusted me to understand about
the baby. You never gave me a chance. You ran away before we could
talk it over. You treated me as if I were a conventional little fool.
That is what you thought of me. You never came back to explain. You
didn’t try to make me understand. You didn’t let me have a chance to
say whether I would take the baby or not. You just assumed that I was
a certain sort of person. You didn’t trust me, and that’s what I shall
never forgive you for.
“I’m not what you think. I’ll tell you this. If it had been I that had
had another sweetheart, and found I was going to have a baby when I was
engaged to you--I’d have told you, I’d have trusted you, I’d have given
you your chance.
“No, I’m not what you think. You never knew me. I hate Vickley as much
as you do--more. It’s you who are conventional at heart.
“You never gave me my chance.
“I would rather not see you. Some time I may feel differently, but it
is too bitter a subject just now. I’m glad I’ve seen Norman Junior. I’m
going back to Vickley in the morning, and I’m leaving with Lucinda some
little things I’ve bought for him while I’ve been here.
“Good-by.
“Madge Ferris.”
Norman stood there, with tears in his eyes. He hadn’t known she was
like that.... He had been an awful fool. He didn’t understand girls at
all....
Well, if he got there before she left, it might still be all right....
It was plain that she still cared for him....
“Taxi?”
“Yes!” He climbed in. “The Annex--quick!” In his imagination he could
see Madge in the hotel room, packing.... He saw himself enter ... yes,
and quarrel, and kiss. Oh, there was no doubt that they would make
up.... And no doubt, either, that that would be the best thing all
around....
Only one thing bothered him. Madge wasn’t what he had thought, at all.
She wasn’t a doll. She was a real girl, with a heart. She could love,
and suffer. She wouldn’t mind being poor with him in Chicago. She would
be a mother to his child. There was no reason why he shouldn’t be glad
to marry her. And in spite of what she wrote, she would be hoping in
her heart that he would come before she packed up and left the hotel.
Only one thing stood in the way--and that was something a loving and
tender wife could surely banish--the ghost of that girl who was so
unaccountably the mother of his child ... Oh, he would forget Isabel in
time....
But he might as well settle that now. He looked out, and rapped on the
glass. “Stop at that cigar store on the corner for a moment!”
He would send her a telegram, and have that off his mind. He knew her
address in Michigan.
“Western Union, please....
“I want to send a telegram....
“To Miss Isabel Drury.... Yes.... Hawk Lake, Michigan.... Just a
moment....”
He had known what he was going to say. Something polite and final.
But suddenly it was as if Isabel was at the other end of the wire,
listening.... and the words went out of his head....
“Just a moment,” he repeated, while the world rocked dizzily about
him....
Couldn’t he say the word that would free them both? Couldn’t he let
that vain dream go?
It seemed not. A new pattern of words was framing itself in his mind,
forcing itself to his lips....
Must he forever be a fool? Must he doom himself to endless unhappiness?
It wouldn’t work out. He knew it. He had renounced her. Why couldn’t he
take what life offered? Madge--and peace.... Madge--waiting now, ready
to forgive him, cherish him, be patient with him....
No.... But at least he could send a sane telegram.
He spoke into the telephone to the impatient operator: “I have it, now.
Here’s the message:
“‘Call me McCullough Advertising Agency when you come Chicago this
week preferably.’ Signed, ‘Norman.’
“That’s all. How much is it?”
He dropped in the nickels and dimes....
And Madge?--he couldn’t help it, that was all....
“I’ve changed my mind,” he said to the taxi-driver, and handed him a
dollar bill.
The taxi drove away, leaving him standing there on the corner.
Yes, no doubt it was a crazy thing to do. But he didn’t care. He had to
see this thing through with Isabel....
He began to walk slowly back toward the apartment.
[The End]