After a few years Samuel's university decided that it had shone
long enough in the reflected glory of his neckties, so they
declaimed to him in Latin, charged him ten dollars for the paper
which proved him irretrievably educated, and sent him into the
turmoil with much self-confidence, a few friends, and the proper
assortment of harmless bad habits.
His family had by that time started back to shirt-sleeves,
through a sudden decline in the sugar-market, and it had already
unbuttoned its vest, so to speak, when Samuel went to work. His
mind was that exquisite TABULA RASA that a university education
sometimes leaves, but he had both energy and influence, so he
used his former ability as a dodging half-back in twisting
through Wall Street crowds as runner for a bank.
His diversion was--women. There were half a dozen: two or three
débutantes, an actress (in a minor way), a grass-widow, and one
sentimental little brunette who was married and lived in a
little house in Jersey City.
They had met on a ferry-boat. Samuel was crossing from New York
on business (he had been working several years by this time) and
he helped her look for a package that she had dropped in the crush.
"Do you come over often?" he inquired casually.
"Just to shop," she said shyly. She had great brown eyes and the
pathetic kind of little mouth. "I've only been married three
months, and we find it cheaper to live over here."
"Does he--does your husband like your being alone like this?"
She laughed, a cheery young laugh.
"Oh, dear me, no. We were to meet for dinner but I must have
misunderstood the place. He'll be awfully worried."
"Well," said Samuel disapprovingly, "he ought to be. If you'll
allow me I'll see you home."
She accepted his offer thankfully, so they took the cable-car
together. When they walked up the path to her little house they
saw a light there; her husband had arrived before her.
"He's frightfully jealous," she announced, laughingly apologetic.
"Very well," answered Samuel, rather stiffly. "I'd better leave
you here."
She thanked him and, waving a good night, he left her.
That would have been quite all if they hadn't met on Fifth
Avenue one morning a week later. She started and blushed and
seemed so glad to see him that they chatted like old friends.
She was going to her dressmaker's, eat lunch alone at Taine's,
shop all afternoon, and meet her husband on the ferry at five.
Samuel told her that her husband was a very lucky man. She
blushed again and scurried off.
Samuel whistled all the way back to his office, but about twelve
o'clock he began to see that pathetic, appealing little mouth
everywhere--and those brown eyes. He fidgeted when he looked at
the clock; he thought of the grill down-stairs where he lunched
and the heavy male conversation thereof, and opposed to that
picture appeared another; a little table at Taine's with the
brown eyes and the mouth a few feet away. A few minutes before
twelve-thirty he dashed on his hat and rushed for the cable-car.
She was quite surprised to see him.
"Why--hello," she said. Samuel could tell that she was just
pleasantly frightened.
"I thought we might lunch together. It's so dull eating with a
lot of men."
She hesitated.
"Why, I suppose there's no harm in it. How could there be!"
It occurred to her that her husband should have taken lunch with
her--but he was generally so hurried at noon. She told Samuel
all about him: he was a little smaller than Samuel, but, oh,
MUCH better-looking. He was a book-keeper and not making a lot
of money, but they were very happy and expected to be rich
within three or four years.
Samuel's grass-widow had been in a quarrelsome mood for three or
four weeks, and through contrast, he took an accentuated
pleasure in this meeting; so fresh was she, and earnest, and
faintly adventurous. Her name was Marjorie.
They made another engagement; in fact, for a month they lunched
together two or three times a week. When she was sure that her
husband would work late Samuel took her over to New Jersey on
the ferry, leaving her always on the tiny front porch, after
she had gone in and lit the gas to use the security of his
masculine presence outside. This grew to be a ceremony--and it
annoyed him. Whenever the comfortable glow fell out through the
front windows, that was his CONGÉ; yet he never suggested coming
in and Marjorie didn't invite him.
Then, when Samuel and Marjorie had reached a stage in which they
sometimes touched each other's arms gently, just to show that
they were very good friends, Marjorie and her husband had one of
those ultrasensitive, supercritical quarrels that couples never
indulge in unless they care a great deal about each other. It
started with a cold mutton-chop or a leak in the gas-jet--and
one day Samuel found her in Taine's, with dark shadows under her
brown eyes and a terrifying pout.
By this time Samuel thought he was in love with Marjorie--so he
played up the quarrel for all it was worth. He was her best
friend and patted her hand--and leaned down close to her brown
curls while she whispered in little sobs what her husband had
said that morning; and he was a little more than her best friend
when he took her over to the ferry in a hansom.
"Marjorie," he said gently, when he left her, as usual, on the
porch, "if at any time you want to call on me, remember that I
am always waiting, always waiting."
She nodded gravely and put both her hands in his. "I know," she
said. "I know you're my friend, my best friend."
Then she ran into the house and he watched there until the gas
went on.
For the next week Samuel was in a nervous turmoil. Some
persistently rational strain warned him that at bottom he and
Marjorie had little in common, but in such cases there is
usually so much mud in the water that one can seldom see to the
bottom. Every dream and desire told him that he loved Marjorie,
wanted her, had to have her.
The quarrel developed. Marjorie's husband took to staying in New
York until late at night, came home several times disagreeably
overstimulated, and made her generally miserable. They must have
had too much pride to talk it out--for Marjorie's husband was,
after all, pretty decent--so it drifted on from one
misunderstanding to another. Marjorie kept coming more and more
to Samuel; when a woman can accept masculine sympathy that is
much more satisfactory to her than crying to another girl. But
Marjorie didn't realize how much she had begun to rely on him,
how much he was part of her little cosmos.
One night, instead of turning away when Marjorie went in and lit
the gas, Samuel went in, too, and they sat together on the sofa
in the little parlor. He was very happy. He envied their home,
and he felt that the man who neglected such a possession out of
stubborn pride was a fool and unworthy of his wife. But when he
kissed Marjorie for the first time she cried softly and told him
to go. He sailed home on the wings of desperate excitement,
quite resolved to fan this spark of romance, no matter how big
the blaze or who was burned. At the time he considered that his
thoughts were unselfishly of her; in a later perspective he knew
that she had meant no more than the white screen in a motion
picture: it was just Samuel--blind, desirous.
Next day at Taine's, when they met for lunch, Samuel dropped all
pretense and made frank love to her. He had no plans, no
definite intentions, except to kiss her lips again, to hold her
in his arms and feel that she was very little and pathetic and
lovable. . . . He took her home, and this time they kissed until
both their hearts beat high--words and phrases formed on his lips.
And then suddenly there were steps on the porch--a hand tried
the outside door. Marjorie turned dead-white.
"Wait!" she whispered to Samuel, in a frightened voice, but in
angry impatience at the interruption he walked to the front door
and threw it open.
Every one has seen such scenes on the stage--seen them so often
that when they actually happen people behave very much like
actors. Samuel felt that he was playing a part and the lines
came quite naturally: he announced that all had a right to lead
their own lives and looked at Marjorie's husband menacingly, as
if daring him to doubt it. Marjorie's husband spoke of the
sanctity of the home, forgetting that it hadn't seemed very holy
to him lately; Samuel continued along the line of "the right to
happiness"; Marjorie's husband mentioned firearms and the
divorce court. Then suddenly he stopped and scrutinized both of
them--Marjorie in pitiful collapse on the sofa, Samuel
haranguing the furniture in a consciously heroic pose.
"Go up-stairs, Marjorie," he said, in a different tone.
"Stay where you are!" Samuel countered quickly.
Marjorie rose, wavered, and sat down, rose again and moved
hesitatingly toward the stairs.
"Come outside," said her husband to Samuel. "I want to talk to
you."
Samuel glanced at Marjorie, tried to get some message from her
eyes; then he shut his lips and went out.
There was a bright moon and when Marjorie's husband came down
the steps Samuel could see plainly that he was suffering--but
he felt no pity for him.
They stood and looked at each other, a few feet apart, and the
husband cleared his throat as though it were a bit husky.
"That's my wife," he said quietly, and then a wild anger surged
up inside him. "Damn you!" he cried--and hit Samuel in the
face with all his strength.
In that second, as Samuel slumped to the ground, it flashed to
him that he had been hit like that twice before, and
simultaneously the incident altered like a dream--he felt
suddenly awake. Mechanically he sprang to his feet and squared
off. The other man was waiting, fists up, a yard away, but
Samuel knew that though physically he had him by several inches
and many pounds, he wouldn't hit him. The situation had
miraculously and entirely changed--a moment before Samuel had
seemed to himself heroic; now he seemed the cad, the outsider,
and Marjorie's husband, silhouetted against the lights of the
little house, the eternal heroic figure, the defender of his home.
There was a pause and then Samuel turned quickly away and went
down the path for the last time.