One day when the young Mathers had been married for about a year,
Jaqueline walked into the rooms of the hardware brokerage which her
husband carried on with more than average success. At the open door of
the inner office she stopped and said: "Oh, excuse me--" She had
interrupted an apparently trivial yet somehow intriguing scene. A young
man named Bronson whom she knew slightly was standing with her husband;
the latter had risen from his desk. Bronson seized her husband's hand
and shook it earnestly--something more than earnestly. When they heard
Jaqueline's step in the doorway both men turned and Jaqueline saw that
Bronson's eyes were red.
A moment later he came out, passing her with a somewhat embarrassed "How
do you do?" She walked into her husband's office.
"What was Ed Bronson doing here?" she demanded curiously, and at once.
Jim Mather smiled at her, half shutting his gray eyes, and drew her
quietly to a sitting position on his desk.
"He just dropped in for a minute," he answered easily. "How's everything
at home?"
"All right." She looked at him with curiosity. "What did he want?" she
insisted.
"Oh, he just wanted to see me about something."
"What?"
"Oh, just something. Business."
"Why were his eyes red?"
"Were they?" He looked at her innocently, and then suddenly they both
began to laugh. Jaqueline rose and walked around the desk and plumped
down into his swivel chair.
"You might as well tell me," she announced cheerfully, "because I'm
going to stay right here till you do."
"Well--" he hesitated, frowning. "He wanted me to do him a little
favor."
Then Jaqueline understood, or rather her mind leaped half accidentally
to the truth.
"Oh." Her voice tightened a little. "You've been lending him some
money."
"Only a little."
"How much?"
"Only three hundred."
"_Only_ three hundred." The voice was of the texture of Bessemer cooled.
"How much do we spend a month, Jim?"
"Why--why, about five or six hundred, I guess." He shifted uneasily.
"Listen, Jack. Bronson'll pay that back. He's in a little trouble. He's
made a mistake about a girl out in Woodmere----"
"And he knows you're famous for being an easy mark, so he comes to you,"
interrupted Jaqueline.
"No." He denied this formally.
"Don't you suppose I could use that three hundred dollars?" she
demanded. "How about that trip to New York we couldn't afford last
November?"
The lingering smile faded from Mather's face. He went over and shut the
door to the outer office.
"Listen, Jack," he began, "you don't understand this. Bronson's one of
the men I eat lunch with almost every day. We used to play together when
we were kids, we went to school together. Don't you see that I'm just
the person he'd be right to come to in trouble? And that's just why I
couldn't refuse."
Jaqueline gave her shoulders a twist as if to shake off this reasoning.
"Well," she answered decidedly, "all I know is that he's no good. He's
always lit and if he doesn't choose to work he has no business living
off the work you do."
They were sitting now on either side of the desk, each having adopted
the attitude of one talking to a child. They began their sentences with
"Listen!" and their faces wore expressions of rather tried patience.
"If you can't understand, I can't tell you," Mather concluded, at the
end of fifteen minutes, on what was, for him, an irritated key. "Such
obligations do happen to exist sometimes among men and they have to be
met. It's more complicated than just refusing to lend money, especially
in a business like mine where so much depends on the good-will of men
down-town."
Mather was putting on his coat as he said this. He was going home with
her on the street-car to lunch. They were between automobiles--they had
sold their old one and were going to get a new one in the spring.
Now the street-car, on this particular day, was distinctly unfortunate.
The argument in the office might have been forgotten under other
circumstances, but what followed irritated the scratch until it became a
serious temperamental infection.
They found a seat near the front of the car. It was late February and an
eager, unpunctilious sun was turning the scrawny street snow into dirty,
cheerful rivulets that echoed in the gutters. Because of this the car
was less full than usual--there was no one standing. The motorman had
even opened his window and a yellow breeze was blowing the late breath
of winter from the car.
It occurred pleasurably to Jaqueline that her husband sitting beside her
was handsome and kind above other men. It was silly to try to change
him. Perhaps Bronson might return the money after all, and anyhow three
hundred dollars wasn't a fortune. Of course he had no business doing
it--but then--
Her musings were interrupted as an eddy of passengers pushed up the
aisle. Jaqueline wished they'd put their hands over their mouths when
they coughed, and she hoped that Jim would get a new machine pretty
soon. You couldn't tell what disease you'd run into in these trolleys.
She turned to Jim to discuss the subject--but Jim had stood up and was
offering his seat to a woman who had been standing beside him in the
aisle. The woman, without so much as a grunt, sat down. Jaqueline
frowned.
The woman was about fifty and enormous. When she first sat down she was
content merely to fill the unoccupied part of the seat, but after a
moment she began to expand and to spread her great rolls of fat over a
larger and larger area until the process took on the aspect of violent
trespassing. When the car rocked in Jaqueline's direction the woman slid
with it, but when it rocked back she managed by some exercise of
ingenuity to dig in and hold the ground won.
Jaqueline caught her husband's eye--he was swaying on a strap--and in an
angry glance conveyed to him her entire disapproval of his action. He
apologized mutely and became urgently engrossed in a row of car cards.
The fat woman moved once more against Jaqueline--she was now practically
overlapping her. Then she turned puffy, disagreeable eyes full on Mrs.
James Mather, and coughed rousingly in her face.
With a smothered exclamation Jaqueline got to her feet, squeezed with
brisk violence past the fleshy knees, and made her way, pink with rage,
toward the rear of the car. There she seized a strap, and there she was
presently joined by her husband in a state of considerable alarm.
They exchanged no word, but stood silently side by side for ten minutes
while a row of men sitting in front of them crackled their newspapers
and kept their eyes fixed virtuously upon the day's cartoons.
When they left the car at last Jaqueline exploded.
"You big _fool_!" she cried wildly. "Did you see that horrible woman you
gave your seat to? Why don't you consider _me_ occasionally instead of
every fat selfish washwoman you meet?"
"How should I know----"
But Jaqueline was as angry at him as she had ever been--it was unusual
for any one to get angry at him.
"You didn't see any of those men getting up for _me_, did you? No wonder
you were too tired to go out last Monday night. You'd probably given
your seat to some--to some horrible, Polish _wash_woman that's strong as
an ox and _likes_ to stand up!"
They were walking along the slushy street stepping wildly into great
pools of water. Confused and distressed, Mather could utter neither
apology nor defense.
Jaqueline broke off and then turned to him with a curious light in her
eyes. The words in which she couched her summary of the situation were
probably the most disagreeable that had ever been addressed to him in
his life.
"The trouble with you, Jim, the reason you're such an easy mark, is that
you've got the ideas of a college freshman--you're a professional nice
fellow."