Each morning as Georgia entered the elevated train and spread open her
paper, she cast off the centuries, being transformed from a housewife
to a "modern economic unit."
She smiled at the morning cartoon or perhaps, in the celebrated phrase
of Dr. Hackett, she sighed softly for the sake of its meticulous
futility. Her penny to the news stand gave her full and free franchise
upon the ever anxious question of the popularity of popular art. Other
Georgias of Chicago were simultaneously passing like judgments in like
elevated cars and the sum of their verdicts would ultimately readjust
social distinctions in Cook and Lake counties, Illinois.
She always turned to the Insurance Notes next. It was her Duty to be
Well-informed and Interested in the Success of Her Employer, for His
Success was Hers. She hadn't been to business college for eight weeks
not to know that.
Next a peek at Marion Jean Delorme's column of heart throbs, which she
frankly regarded as dissipation, because she enjoyed it, and everybody
who read it called it common.
By this time, home and its squabbling; its everlasting question of how
far a pay envelope can stretch; her sullen contemplation of Jim's
alcoholism; and irritability at her mother's pottering way had vanished
into the background of her mind, where they slept through her working
day.
She engaged herself with more appealing problems and a larger world.
She deplored the litter of torn-up streets and the thunder of the loop,
instead of the litter of the breakfast dishes and the squeak of the
hinge. Not that clean dishes are less meritorious than clean streets,
but, to such minds as hers had grown to be, less captivating. To
change desks downtown was more fun than to change chairs at home.
She felt her solidarity with the other people who streamed into the
business district at eight forty-five, to get money by writing or
talking. It was the master's end of the game and she belonged to it.
Outside-the-loop worked with its arms and hands--she worked merely with
her fingers. The time might come when she would need to work only with
her tongue--and triple her income. She was in line for that.
She was no mean citizen of no mean city throughout the day: at the
lunch club where she coöperated; in the big white-tiled vestibule of
her building where she exchanged ten words of weather prophecy with the
elevator starter between clicks; in the rest room where they talked
office politics, and shows, and woman suffrage, as well as beaux and
hats; behind her machine which rattled "twenty dollars a week by your
own ten fingers and no man's gratuity."
There were no oaths, no bonds unbreakable, no church to tell her she
couldn't change her job, as it tells the housed and covered women who
get their bread by wifehood.
If she didn't like the temperature of the room, or the size of her
employer's ears, she could walk across the street and do as
well--perhaps better.
If he had sworn at her, or come ugly drunk into her presence--but that
was inconceivable. Employers didn't do that, only husbands, because
they knew they had you.
It was the full life and the free life which she lived, she and her
sisters of the skyscrapers. It was the emancipation of woman, and the
curse of Eve was lifted from them.
But the tide of her being which flowed regularly each work-morning,
ebbed regularly each night. Her horizon became smaller and less bold
after she had slid her nickel over the glass to the spectacled cashier
in the L cage and was herded for home on the jammed platform. Her
boldness continuously diminished as station after station was called
and she stood to her strap, glancing from the direct imperatives,
"Uneeda Union Suit and We Can Prove It," "Hasten to the House of
Hoopelheimer," "Smart Set Collars for Swell Spenders," "Blemishes
Blasted by Blackfeeto," to the limp, sallow people who, like herself,
had left their vitality downtown.
When she pushed away from the light of her home station into the gloom
and up the ineffectually lighted street between rows upon rows of three
and four story flats, her head slightly bent, scurrying along with the
working woman's nightfall pace, like Lucifer, she felt the mighty
distance. She had shrunk into a middle-class wife who had been a poor
picker.
So it usually happened. But the day of her triumph over Miss Gerson
was an exception, and the corona of the office extended and enveloped
her through the rows of flat buildings and up two flights of stairs to
the door of her own apartment.
She entered happily, gaily. And there was Jim sprawled in one chair,
his dusty boots in another, without a coat to hide his soiled shirt
sleeves, without a collar to apologize for his unshaven chin, a
frazzled cigar between his fingers and a heap of ashes beside him where
he had let them fall upon the carpet--her carpet that she had earned
and paid for.
Ashes had fallen, too, upon his protruding abdomen. He breathed very
heavily, almost wheezed. He looked up to speak. His eyes were rather
swinish in recovery from debauch. His teeth were bad and the gap which
had come under the cut lip was not a scar of honor. She hoped he
wouldn't speak--but of course he did.
"Hello, Georgia."
"Hello," she answered mechanically.
"What you been doing?"
What a stupid question. What did he suppose she had been doing? For
when a husband doesn't suit, he doesn't suit at all--his very attempts
at peacemaking become an offense in him.
"Working," she said curtly and passed on to their bedroom.
"Oh, hell! cut out the everlasting grouch," he called after her, and
went to the window and looked out, kneeling moodily on the window seat.
He was Henpecko the Monk, all right. What she needed was a firm hand.
Women took all the rope you gave them--they took advantage of you. He
ought to have begun long ago to shut down on her nonsense. Other
husbands did, and by God, he would begin. Then he rubbed his prickly
chin and smiled ruefully. For hadn't he begun a great many times and
had he ever been able to finish?
Besides, he was broke, and it was strictly necessary, most
unfortunately in view of his present disfavor, for him to obtain a loan.
Maybe Al would help him out and he wouldn't have to ask Georgia. There
was an idea. It was more dignified, too.
He didn't know whether Al had come in yet.
He himself had occupied a twenty-five cent seat that afternoon near Mr.
Frank Schulte, most graceful of Cubs, to get a little fresh air. It
did a fellow good and took his mind off home, which a fellow had to do
now and then if he was going to stand it at all.
On the return trip, to be sure, he had suffered from a twinge of fans'
conscience as he realized that his activities of the day had taken
about fifty cents out instead of putting any cents in. A rather keen
twinge, too, inasmuch as Matty had been strictly "right." There is no
fun in giving up half a dollar to see the Cubs vivisected.
"Oh, Al," he called to the back of the flat.
"What?" came the call back.
"Hear about the game?"
"Nope."
"I was out," said Jim.
That ought to fetch him--and it did.
Al entered expectant. He was an extremely good-looking boy of sixteen,
with pink cheeks, clear blue eyes, and a kink to his hair. He might
have been called pretty if his shoulders were not quite so broad.
"Who win? I was north on an errand late and couldn't get a peek at an
extra after the fifth." So Al apologized to his brother-in-law for his
ignorance. "It was one and one then."
"The Giants win, three to two, and believe me there was a rank decision
at the plate against Johnny Evers. He beefed on it proper and got
chased. That's what smeared us."
"Johnny ought to learn to control himself," said Al pathetically.
"Yep. He's got too much pep--that's what's the matter with that lad."
"And all the umpires in the league have banded together against him. I
heard it straight to-day. And believe me"--there was an element of
mystery in the boy's voice, "there's something in it."
Jim clenched his fist and brought it down hard. "If the Cubs win out
against the empires this year," he stated his proposition with a
vehement brandish of his fist, "they'll be going some," but his
peroration rather flattened out--"believe me."
"Yes, sir, Jim. That's no damn lie."
"Say, Al, loan me a quarter?"
Unhappy pause.
All sportsmen, from polo players and tarpon fishers to Kaffirs in their
kraals, like to talk it over afterwards. Al didn't want to interrupt
his baseball palaver with Jim. It might last right through supper and
until bedtime, as it often did when Jim stayed home.
He had a vast fund of hypotheses to tell Jim again, and some new ones.
If he refused Jim the loan their interesting talk would stop. But if
he granted it he would be a boob. It was certainly one dilemma.
Jim smiled and repeated his thought. "I'll do as much for you some
time. Go on now."
Georgia came in quickly and angrily. "I should think you'd be ashamed,
Jim Connor, trying to do a boy."
"Oh, so you've been rubbering, eh?" Jim sneered.
She had; but this, her weakness, was one she shared with many other
women--likewise men. In petty lives are petty deeds. Downtown she did
not listen, or tattle, or read other people's letters. There were more
important matters to attend to.
"I got to have a little loan," said Jim--now was his time for
boldness--"to tide me over till Monday."
She was obstinately mute.
"Let me have a two-dollar bill till then?"
"No."
"One?"
"No."
"What then?"
"Nothing."
"You didn't use to be such a tightwad."
"You taught me that, too, Jim. I'll never give you another cent to
drink. It isn't fair to the rest of us."
Mrs. Talbot, Georgia's mother, the homebody of the household, came in
from the kitchen to say that supper was now ready and she was sick and
tired of the irregularity of the family meals, which she had never been
accustomed to as a girl.
"Oh, cheer up, mother. I've good news to-day--a raise."