GOOD RESOLUTIONS
I
Madelaine Theddon had returned from a matinée one spring afternoon when
she was met by the announcement that a gentleman had been waiting an
hour. Gordon Ruggles arose to greet her.
Madelaine’s first feeling was one of extreme annoyance and defiant
exasperation. She looked at Gordon, however, and realized in an instant
that a change had come over the fellow. What had happened?
“Don’t be angry, Madge,” he pleaded respectfully enough. “All I want is
a few minutes—to talk.”
Gordon was clothed differently. His rakish, sport suit had given way to
sober black. He stood erect and not with a leering slouch. Most of all,
he had visited a surgeon-dentist and that disfiguring front tooth had
been corrected. It had been cut off and a crown put in its place which
gave his mouth and the entire front of his face a different appearance.
Yes, Gordon had changed.
“I’m not angry, Gord. Why, you’re looking fine! What’s happened?”
“Maybe I can explain—if you’ll give me the opportunity. I’ve been doing
a lot of thinking lately, Madge.”
She laid her street wraps on the bed in the adjoining room and came
back, patting her hair.
“May I smoke, Madge? It would help what I want to say.”
Might he smoke? It was the first time Gordon had ever made such a
request. Formerly he would have smoked whether it offended her or not.
“Certainly,” she replied.
He did not produce his familiar gold-plated cigarette case. He lighted a
cigar. Then, having accepted the chair she indicated, he leaned back and
put a half-inch of ash on the tip of the fine Havana before he started.
“Madge, I’ve been an awful cad, haven’t I?”
“Yes, Gordon,” was the girl’s candid answer. “You have!”
“I know! I’m sorry!”
“You’re sorry! And how long have you been sorry?”
“Dad came down here to see you, didn’t he—a few months ago?”
“I’ll be frank. He did.”
“Yes. He went back to Springfield. And do you know what he did?”
“What did he do?”
“He gave me the darndest thrashing—the first—he ever gave me in his
life. I never suspected he had it in him!”
“What?”
“He did. I wish he’d given it to me a dozen years ago. I had it coming.”
Madelaine sat astonished. This from Gordon!
“Yes, he did—and I had it coming, I say. Not only that, he stopped my
allowance; I haven’t had a cent from him for weeks—months! Four of
them!”
“Where—what—how are you supporting yourself?”
“I went to work, Madge. I’ve been working since the last of February.”
“Gordon Ruggles!”
“I don’t want any credit. And don’t compliment me. I don’t deserve it.”
“What sort of work are you doing?”
“I got a job in an iron foundry. I make forty dollars a week. And did
you know, Madge—honestly—it looks bigger than the whole thousand your
mother let me have the day we first met.”
Madelaine could not keep her pleasure from her voice.
“That’s simply fine, Gord! And what do your father and mother think
about it?”
“Pop doesn’t say much. He’s too riled. You must have given him a pretty
bad jolt when he came to see you. He always thought we Ruggleses were so
absolutely perfect—it certainly took him down a peg, you bet.
Mother—well, mother thinks I’m crazy—or at least father is. She thinks
it’s pretty much another lark I’m on and in time I’ll get over it.”
“That’s not the right attitude, Gord. You’re doing a splendid thing.”
Gordon shrugged his shoulders.
“Mother’s got her notions. They’re pretty high-flown. We don’t see much
of each other. I’m not living at home. I’m boarding with a fellow who
works in the same office.”
“And you did this because your father thrashed you?”
“Not exactly, Madge. The fact that father—as much of a fop and a prig as
he’s always been—could do it, started me thinking. Besides—anyway,
Madge—honestly, I was tired of searching for thrills. I’d tried all the
thrills till only one remained—Work. I wonder if you can understand?”
“Perhaps I understand, Gord, better than you think.”
“Madge, I’m going to tell you something else.”
“I’m sure I’m delighted to hear whatever you’ve got to tell me—along
this line. It’s perfectly splendid!”
“Madge, I’m going to tell you something because I’ve got to tell you.
Madge—_I love you!_” He said this last in a whisper.
It was silent in the apartment for a moment after that. The manner of
the fellow’s declaration was different. This was not the hoyden who had
tried to compromise her. His eyelid didn’t flop, either. Madge noticed
that.
“I love you, Madge,” the man went on before she could frame a suitable
reply. “I’ve always loved you. I loved you from the moment I set eyes on
you that day I banged into your bedroom, although I didn’t know it was
love—not then. You’ve always had a peculiar influence over me, Madge.
I’ve been a rotter. I’ve done things for which I can’t look myself in
the mirror—to say nothing of you. But—well, if a chap can be sorry, then
I’m sorry. I’m trying to show I’m sorry by straightening out. I’ve met
other girls and I’ve raised blue hell with them. But they’ve been
incidents in my life; they’ve come and they’ve gone. You haven’t come
and gone, Madge. Always you have held the same place in my feelings and
emotions. You’ve seemed steady, sure, something just a little above me,
waiting for me to come through clean. I say I love you, Madge. I’ve come
down here to tell you so. I had to tell you. I wanted you to know and
understand.”
“You’re paying me a great compliment, Gordon,” the woman managed to
articulate at last. “But—but—I can’t marry you, Gord. Somehow—I can’t.”
“I’m not asking you to marry me, not yet, Madge. In a lot of ways I’m my
same old self. But I want you to know that I’m working for something,
even if it’s only your regard and esteem and respect, Madge. That’s been
the big trouble with me, all my life. I’ve never had an incentive—any
goal ahead to win. From as far back as I can remember, there’s been no
occasion for me to work and win anything. Everything came easy—or
rather, it was at hand for me to sample by simply reaching out and
taking it, even other girls and women, Madge. You’ve been the only thing
that’s been denied me; that piqued me because I couldn’t have you by
bawling for you or ‘rushing’ you. Pop and mother let me have all the
money I wanted from the day I could reach up over a counter and hand
some one silver coins. Nothing was ever too good for me. I got a rotten
idea of my own importance. And I’ve known I had it for a long, long
time. There’s a lot of it left yet. But I’ve reached the place where I’m
tired of having everything handed to me. Honest-to-God, Madge! The world
and everything in it was beginning to go stale. I’d explored everything
I’d seen to explore; I’d had everything I caterwauled for; people had
gone and come the moment I set up a tantrum or showed fight. And life
was going stale, I say. It was the same old thing, over and over and
over. I might have a better motor-car or a prettier woman. But still it
would only be an automobile and a—a—some one to play with. I looked into
the future and saw nothing different until the day I dropped. And then
Pop banged me in good shape one night in the library. He used a razor
strop—yes, he did. I’m tall as he is, and I thought I could lick my
weight in anything human that lived, male or female. But he showed me I
couldn’t. We made an awful mess. But he trimmed me properly and sat on
my chest. When he’d shown he could do it, he started talking to me.
Among other things, he made me promise I’d come down here at the first
opportunity and humbly ask your forgiveness. I vowed for a time I
wouldn’t. But I found a new thrill and a new interest in work and I
wondered if I wasn’t cheating myself by not playing the gentleman—with
you—with—everybody. I don’t mean as a policy,” the fellow added hastily.
“I mean because it was what I ought to do. And so I’ve come, Madge. I’ve
got to be back on the job Monday morning, but I want to go back feeling
I’ve got a new interest in life—something worth while. That’s the whole
story in a nutshell, Madge. And I’m telling you frankly I love you
and—I’m sorry—terribly sorry!”
What could she do? What could she say? Her reply sounded trite and
inadequate.
“That’s manly of you, Gordon. And—well, I’m going to tell you exactly
what I told your father—if you prove the stuff that’s latent in you, you
stand as good a chance of winning my friendship permanently—and maybe
more—as any man I know now or ever will know. In fact, you’ve got a bit
of advantage, because I know you will have overcome more handicaps.”
“Madge, is there any one else who——”
“Who loves me? I don’t know, Gordon. I have many men friends and go
about much.”
“Is there any one whom you love? It’s a rotten thing to ask but—hang it
all, I’m—jealous!”
What was the little heart-pinch that came to Madeline then? Why should
her thoughts flee secretly to some torn pieces of paper in an envelope
in her bottom dresser drawer?
“Not enough to marry, Gordon. That’s as far as I want to be
interrogated.”
“Madge! Have I got a chance?”
The girl smiled, a wonderful smile.
“All the chance in the world, Gordon. Go through with this thing and
you’ll prove yourself a man!”
“Madge! There never was a woman like you. There’ll never be another.”
“Fiddlesticks! The world is filled with women like myself!”
“Then they don’t move on the strata where the fellows who need them most
can contact them.”
Madelaine left the contention open. She was thinking about Gordon’s
language. He had always talked like a street gamin despite his home
culture. Now his vocabulary was more refined, far more careful.
It was an hour before he arose to go.
“Madge,” he said at the door, “you’re never going to practice, even if
you graduate from medical school.”
“Why not, Gordon? What makes you think so?” She was amused.
“There are too many men who need you in a slightly different capacity
than doling out pills!”
She was glad when the door had closed on him that he had not said,
“Because I want you and intend to marry you myself!”
Poor Gordon! Perhaps he too had been more sinned against than sinning.
Madelaine went back to her chair and remained for a long time in
thought.
“I can’t let myself drift into it—I can’t. I can’t! Oh, dear, where can
I go, what can I do, to escape it? Will I marry him after all? Will his
persistence win in the end?”
Tears filmed her eyes. She had felt that strange pinch in her heart
again, remembering the envelope in the drawer.
“I want a man who has won out in spite of everything!” she cried. “Never
mind how Gordon wins out, he will not have won out over enough!”
She wondered while dressing for dinner that night if Nathaniel Forge had
come through that jail scrape “with a clean bill of health.”
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