He expected to be gone several weeks, so Georgia telephoned the janitor
to tell mama that she would stay down for dinner, again, but would be
home soon afterwards. Mason took her to the top of a tall building,
where there was a sixty cent table d'hote. The topic, of course, was
his forthcoming trip from routine to adventure and its probable effect
upon their fortunes.
For all the wise saws about not talking to women, one may hardly dine
with his fiancée of a day without mention of the marvelous opportunity
which dropped before one that morning as from the skies. Especially if
she is in the same business and heard it drop.
So, little by little, one thing leading to another, he told her
everything he knew or guessed or hoped. He did not once forget
Silverman's injunction to silence, as he babbled on. It stuck in his
mind like a thorn in the foot; and, telling himself he was a fool to
talk, he talked. The precise moment didn't seem to come when he could
frankly say, without offense, "Georgia, that part of it is a secret."
And he didn't see how to temporize widely, for it had become physically
impossible for him to lie to her, though, of course, he retained the
use of his faculties for commerce with others.
So he passed on the ever heavy load of silence, hoping that she could
hold her tongue if he couldn't. It was as much her affair as his
anyway, so he felt, and if by her indiscretion she should cut him out
of Silverman's confidence and future big things, she would in the same
motion cut herself out of a Panno Six and a house in the trees and a
richer circle of friends.
But, inasmuch as she was a case-hardened private secretary, she kept
her faith with him in this thing at least. If he never has a Panno Six
it wasn't her fault.
The most surprising thing to her in his narrative was that it did not
more greatly interest her. It seemed to her a far-off affair,
impersonal, like something she was reading in the papers. Stevens
seemed to stand outside her area of life, which had become narrow and
curiously uneasy, heavy with a future in which he was not concerned.
At first he attributed the listlessness, which she tried to conceal but
could not, to one of the widely advertised feminine moods, and he tried
his best to divert her not merely with pictures of their future,
blissful and automobileful, but also with quips and cranks and wanton
wiles. No go.
So when course VI of the table d'hote--nuts and pecans, three of each
to the order--was ended, he suggested that perhaps she would better go
directly home instead of waiting downtown with him until his train
went. She acquiesced. They walked to the "L" in silence.
Imagine the chagrin of a knight riding off to the bloody wars from a
ladye who didn't care if he never came back. That was how it struck
him. She took his arm to climb the steep iron stairs, and at the top
stopped a moment to get her breath.
"Dear heart," she said, "don't have all those awful thoughts about
me--don't you suppose I know what you're thinking? I've been dull
to-night, but my head is simply splitting. I believe I'm in for the
grip."
He looked at his watch. "I'm sure I can take you home and get back in
time."
"Bather than have you risk it, I'll stay down until your train goes."
"Promise me then to get a doctor and go right to bed."
"I'll go right to bed--I can barely hold my head up, and I'll get a
doctor in the morning if I'm not better."
There were only two or three other people on the long platform, so he
kissed her good-bye. Then the screened iron gate was slapped to behind
her, the guard jerked his cord, she smiled weakly and waved her hand
back at him, and it was all over for a much longer time than he had any
idea of.
He watched her train until the tail lights turned the loop, then said
"Hell," lit a cigar, pushed his hat back, sighed and went to check his
trunk.
He sat up in the smoking compartment gassing with drummers until the
last of them turned in, sympathized for awhile with the Pullman porter,
who suffered volubly as soon as Mason gave him permission to. He had
been married that very afternoon and now he was off to Los Angeles and
back, a ten-day journey, leaving behind him as a dark and shining mark
for those who realized the devilishness of his itinerary an
unprotected, young, gay-hearted bride. He appreciated the snares that
would be set for her by his brothers of brush and berth. He'd been a
bachelor himself. "Yas, sah, railroadin' is sure one yalla dawg's life
for a fambly man."
Stevens lay awake a long time that night thinking of the future, and
Georgia lay awake a long time considering the past. She felt hot and
thirsty; three or four times she got out of bed and ran the faucet
until the water was cold and bathed her face and drank.
After she had left Stevens she had taken a cross seat in the car facing
homeward, and, placing her burning cheek against the window for
coolness, had dozed off for many stations. When she awoke with a start
at the one beyond her own, her personality had slipped to its earlier
center as definitely as when a clutch slips from high to second speed.
It is said that the last step gained by the individual or the race is
the first step lost, in sickness, age and fear. So Georgia's illness
began its attack on the topmost layer of her character, that part of it
which had been built in the recent years. She was driven, as it were,
to a lower floor of her own edifice and no longed saw so wide a view.
Her pride and self-will crumbled--for the sick aren't proud--and her
modernity trickled away. After all, was it not more peaceful to do
what people thought you ought to, than to fight them constantly for
your own way? Life was too short and human nature too weak for the
stress and strain of such ceaseless resistance as she had made in the
past few years against her family, the friends of her family, and the
Church. For God's sake let her now have peace.
Yes, for God's sake. The words had come irreverently to her mind. But
after all, could she or anyone else have peace except from God? and was
there any other gift as sweet?
She knew there was one sure anodyne for her troubled spirit, and only
one--the confessional. She had kept away too long already, for more
than two years. She would go to-morrow, or perhaps the next day, and
wash her soul clean. Father Hervey would talk to her as if to rip her
heart strings out, but in the end he would leave her with peace, after
she had promised and vowed to give up her mortal sin. Poor Mason, that
meant him. She wept a few weak tears, then dried her eyes on the
corner of the sheet.
So this was to be the end of her spiritual adventuring, the end of the
free expression of her free being, and selfhood, and all those other
valorous things she had rejoiced in.
She wasn't able any longer to go on with it. She must desert the army
of women in the day of battle, the army led by Curie, Key, Pankhurst,
Schreiner, Addams, Gilman, and cross over to the adversary, the
encompassing Church. It would absorb her into its vast unity as a drop
disappears in the sea. It would think for her and will for her. She
would be animated with its life, not her own; but it would suffuse her
with the comfort that is past understanding. She would eat the lotus
and submit. She was not strong, like great people.
Perhaps the priest would suggest her return to Jim. But that wasn't in
the law. He could only suggest and urge it. He could not insist on
it. She couldn't go back to Jim, she couldn't, she couldn't. She
sobbed as if there were a presence in the room which she hoped to move
by her tears.
A clear vision of her husband came before her, as she had often seen
him, sitting on the edge of this very bed, in undershirt and trousers,
leaning forward, breathing abominably loud, his paunch sagging,
unlacing his shoes. Right or wrong, good or bad, heaven or hell, that
was one sight the priest should never make her see again. She hated
Jim and loathed him forever.
As she was dressing next morning she called to Al to please go down and
telephone for the doctor, for she knew she could never go through the
day's work without medicine.
Presently Dr. Randall bowled up, a jolly stout man, smiling gayly and
crinkling up the corners of his eyes, though he had slept just eight
hours in the last seventy-two. The family was glumly finishing
breakfast when he came. Throughout the meal Mrs. Talbot had been
burningly aware of the contrast between decent, self-respecting women
with a thought to themselves, and brazen young fly-by-nights in thin
waists, who run after men and make themselves free; but she threw only
a few pertinent remarks into the atmosphere, because the poor girl was
so evidently out of sorts, with her high color and not touching a bite
of food. Indeed, a body could hardly help feeling sorry for her, for
all her wicked pride of will; very likely this sickness was a judgment
on her for it.
When Dr. Randall had considered her pulse, her temperature and her
tongue, and asked half a dozen questions, he told Al to send for a
carriage and take her immediately to Columbus Hospital.
"Why, doctor," exclaimed Mrs. Talbot, terrorized, "is it anything
serious?"
"Typhoid--I'll go telephone to let 'em know you're coming."
The doctor departed and Mrs. Talbot took Georgia on her lap and crooned
over her until the carriage came.