The old man had gone to Europe for his summer vacation, leaving Georgia
secure in her place with nothing to worry about. She had no more than
half work to do. Business had slackened and the whole office was in
the doldrums. Life's fitful fever had abated to subnormal placidity.
Even her mother's chronic indignation over trifles had been quieted by
the summer's drowse.
The only interesting moments in Georgia's day were nine o'clock when
she came and five o'clock when she left--noon on Saturdays. The
Sundays were amazingly dull.
So was her home. Al stayed away from it from breakfast unto bedtime,
with a brief interval for supper. He was engrossed in prairie league
baseball for one thing. That occupied him all day Sunday and half of
Saturday. Of course he couldn't play after dark, but whenever Georgia
asked him where he was going as he bolted from the table with his cap,
he answered, "Out to see some fellahs."
If she hoped that he would stay at home to-night, for he was out last
night and the one before, he would explain, with as much conviction as
if he offered a clinching argument, that "the fellahs" were a-calling
and he must go.
She was rather put out to find herself unable to speak with the same
vehemence and authority to him as she had been able to use with Jim
concerning the folly and wickedness of going out after supper. For
when it comes to putting fingers on a man's destiny, a wife is a more
effective agency than a sister. Even in unhappy marriages husband and
wife are as two circles which intersect. They have common, identical
ground between them. It may not be large, but such as it is it
inevitably gives them moments of oneness. Brother and sister are as
two circles, whose rims just touch. They may be very near each other,
but at no time are they each other.
Georgia's restlessness and discontent increased as the summer went on,
probably because she was affecting nobody else's destiny to any
calculable extent. Her young brother Al kept away, perhaps warned by a
deep race instinct that sisters are not meant to affect destinies. Her
old mother was a settled case already. She wouldn't change; she
couldn't change; she could hardly be modified, except by the weather or
the rheumatism; she would merely grow old and die. No satisfaction for
a young adventurous woman in experimenting on such a soul.
It has been said that neither the woman nor the man alone is the
complete human being, but the man and the woman together. This woman,
Georgia, who for seven years had been completed by the addition of the
masculine element, was now made incomplete. She struggled in vain to
find contentment in regular hours, regular sleep, regular work and
regular pay.
She had supposed for years that peace and quiet, and enough money, and
never the smell of whiskey were all she wanted. And here was her
subconsciousness, which she couldn't understand, making her perfectly
wretched, though she couldn't tell why; calling insistently for another
man, though she didn't in the least realize it. She only knew she was
tired of being cooped up in the house evenings; she wanted to get out
now and then for a change and to see people who had some ideas.
She went for a Saturday evening supper to the Kaiser Wilhelm Zweite
Beer and Music Garden with a school-girl friend and her husband. This
pleasure-ground was well north, out of the smoke. The night was soft
and the music lovely. She was much entertained by the husband's talk,
and considered that she held up her end with him very well.
The next time they invited her she spent some little time before hand,
"fixing-up" for the occasion. Ribbons were put back where they used to
be long ago when she first met Jim. Her hat underwent revolutionary
readjustment, as the school friend made plain by heated compliments on
Georgia's millinery skill.
However, the husband seemed absolutely content with its effect and
Georgia's animation increased throughout the evening, calling back a
long neglected flush to her cheeks and a gay pace to her bearing. She
was not asked a third time, however, which did not unflatter her. It
was evidence that she had not slowed down completely--that she was not
finished.
Meanwhile Jim, after spreeing away his twenty dollars, had gone West.