Late in the summer of 1912, at a time when Una did not expect the return
of her husband for at least three weeks, she was in their room in the
afternoon, reading "Salesmanship for Women," and ruminatively eating
lemon-drops from a small bag.
As though he were a betrayed husband dramatically surprising her, Mr.
Schwirtz opened the door, dropped a large suit-case, and stood, glaring.
"Well!" he said, with no preliminary, "so here you are! For once you
could--"
"Why, Ed! I didn't expect to see you for--"
He closed the door and gesticulated. "No! Of course you didn't. Why
ain't you out with some of your swell friends that I ain't good enough
to meet, shopping, and buying dresses, and God knows what--"
"Why, Ed!"
"Oh, don't 'why-Ed' me! Well, ain't you going to come and kiss me? Nice
reception when a man's come home tired from a hard trip--wife so busy
reading a book that she don't even get up from her chair and make him
welcome in his own room that he pays for. Yes, by--"
"Why, you didn't--you don't act as though--"
"Yes, sure, that's right; lay it all on--"
"--you wanted me to kiss you."
"Well, neither would anybody if they'd had all the worries I've had,
sitting there worrying on a slow, hot train that stopped at every
pig-pen--yes, and on a day-coach, too, by golly! _Somebody_ in this
family has got to economize!--while you sit here cool and comfortable;
not a thing on your mind but your hair; not a thing to worry about
except thinking how damn superior you are to your husband! Oh, sure! But
I made up my mind--I thought it all out for once, and I made up my mind
to one thing, you can help me out by economizing, anyway."
"Oh, Ed, I don't know what you're driving at. I _haven't_ been
extravagant, ever. Why, I've asked you any number of times not to spend
so much money for suppers and so forth--"
"Yes, sure, lay it all onto me. I'm fair game for everybody that's
looking for a nice, soft, easy, safe boob to kick! Why, look there!"
While she still sat marveling he pounced on the meek little five-cent
bag of lemon-drops, shook it as though it were a very small kitten, and
whined: "Look at this! Candy or something all the while! You never have
a single cent left when I come home--candy and ice-cream sodas, and
matinées, and dresses, and everything you can think of. If it ain't one
thing, it's another. Well, you'll either save from now on--"
"Look here! What do you mean, working off your grouch on--"
"--or else you won't _have_ anything to spend, un'erstand? And when it
comes down to talking about grouches I suppose you'll be real _pleased_
to know--this will be sweet news, probably, to _you_--I've been fired!"
"Fired? Oh, Ed!"
"Yes, fired-oh-Ed. Canned. Got the gate. Thrown out. Got the
razzle-dazzle. Got the hook thrown into me. Bounced. Kiyudeled. That is,
at least, I will be, as soon as I let the old man get at me, judging
from the love-letters he's been sending me, inviting me to cut a switch
and come out to the wood-shed with him."
"Oh, Ed dear, what was the trouble?"
She walked up to him, laid her hand on his shoulder. Her voice was
earnest, her eyes full of pity. He patted her hand, seemed from her
gentle nearness to draw comfort--not passion. He slouched over to the
bed, and sat with his thick legs stuck out in front of him, his hands in
his trousers pockets, while he mused:
"Oh, I don't hardly know what it _is_ all about. My sales have been
falling off, all rightee. But, good Lord! that's no fault of mine. I
work my territory jus' as hard as I ever did, but I can't meet the
competition of the floor-wax people. They're making an auto polish
now--better article at a lower price--and what can I do? They got a full
line, varnish, cleaner, polish, swell window displays, national
advertising, swell discounts--everything; and I can't buck competition
like that. And then a lot of the salesmen at our shop are jealous of me,
and one thing and another. Well, now I'll go down and spit the old man
in the eye couple o' times, and get canned, unless I can talk him out of
his bad acting. Oh, I'll throw a big bluff. I'll be the little
misunderstood boy, but I don't honestly think I can put anything across
on him. I'm-- Oh, hell, I guess I'm getting old. I ain't got the pep I
used to have. Not but what J. Eddie Schwirtz can still sell goods, but I
can't talk up to the boss like I could once. I gotta feel some sympathy
at the home office. And I by God deserve it--way I've worked and slaved
for that bunch of cutthroats, and now-- Sure, that's the way it goes in
this world. I tell you, I'm gonna turn socialist!"
"Ed--listen, Ed. Please, oh, _please_ don't be offended now; but don't
you think perhaps the boss thinks you drink too much?"
"How could he? I don't drink very much, and you know it. I don't hardly
touch a drop, except maybe just for sociability. God! this temperance
wave gets my goat! Lot of hot-air females telling me what I can do and
what I can't do--fella that knows when to drink and when to stop. Drink?
Why, you ought to see some of the boys! There's Burke McCullough. Say, I
bet he puts away forty drinks a day, if he does one, and I don't know
that it hurts him any; but me--"
"Yes, I know, dear. I was just thinking--maybe your boss is one of the
temperance cranks," Una interrupted. Mr. Schwirtz's arguments regarding
the privileges of a manly man sounded very familiar. This did not seem
to be a moment for letting her husband get into the full swing of them.
She begged: "What will you do if they let you out? I wish there was
something I could do to help."
"Dun'no'. There's a pretty close agreement between a lot of the leading
paint-and-varnish people--gentleman's agreement--and it's pretty hard to
get in any place if you're in Dutch with any of the others. Well, I'm
going down now and watch 'em gwillotine me. You better not wait to have
dinner with me. I'll be there late, thrashing all over the carpet with
the old man, and then I gotta see some fellas and start something. Come
here, Una."
He stood up. She came to him, and when he put his two hands on her
shoulders she tried to keep her aversion to his touch out of her look.
He shook his big, bald head. He was unhappy and his eyes were old.
"Nope," he said; "nope. Can't be done. You mean well, but you haven't
got any fire in you. Kid, can't you understand that there are wives
who've got so much passion in 'em that if their husbands came home
clean-licked, like I am, they'd--oh, their husbands would just
naturally completely forget their troubles in love--real love, with fire
in it. Women that aren't ashamed of having bodies.... But, oh, Lord! it
ain't your fault. I shouldn't have said anything. There's lots of wives
like you. More 'n one man's admitted his wife was like that, when he's
had a couple drinks under his belt to loosen his tongue. You're not to
blame, but-- I'm sorry.... Don't mind my grouch when I came in. I was so
hot, and I'd been worrying and wanted to blame things onto somebody....
Don't wait for me at dinner. If I ain't here by seven, go ahead and
feed. Good-by."
§ 2
All she knew was that at six a woman's purring voice on the telephone
asked if Mr. Eddie Schwirtz had returned to town yet. That he did not
reappear till after midnight. That his return was heralded by wafting
breezes with whisky laden. That, in the morning, there was a smear of
rice powder on his right shoulder and that he was not so urgent in his
attentions to her as ordinarily. So her sympathy for him was lost. But
she discovered that she was neither jealous nor indignant--merely
indifferent.
He told her at breakfast that, with his usual discernment, he had
guessed right. When he had gone to the office he had been discharged.
"Went out with some business acquaintances in the evening--got to pull
all the wires I can now," he said.
She said nothing.
§ 3
They had less than two hundred dollars ahead. But Mr. Schwirtz borrowed
a hundred from his friend, Burke McCullough, and did not visibly have
to suffer from want of highballs, cigars, and Turkish baths. From the
window of their room Una used to see him cross the street to the café
entrance of the huge Saffron Hotel--and once she saw him emerge from it
with a fluffy blonde. But she did not attack him. She was spellbound in
a strange apathy, as in a dream of swimming on forever in a warm and
slate-hued sea. She was confident that he would soon have another
position. He had over-ridden her own opinions about business--the
opinions of the underling who never sees the great work as a rounded
whole--till she had come to have a timorous respect for his commercial
ability.
Apparently her wifely respect was not generally shared in the paint
business. At least Mr. Schwirtz did not soon get his new position.
The manager of the hotel came to the room with his bill and pressed for
payment. And after three weeks--after a night when he had stayed out
very late and come home reeking with perfume--Mr. Schwirtz began to hang
about the room all day long and to soak himself in the luxury of
complaining despair.
Then came the black days.
There were several scenes (during which she felt like a beggar about to
be arrested) between Mr. Schwirtz and the landlord, before her husband
paid part of a bill whose size astounded her.
Mr. Schwirtz said that he was "expecting something to turn up--nothin'
he could do but wait for some telephone calls." He sat about with his
stockinged feet cocked up on the bed, reading detective stories till he
fell asleep in his chair. He drank from unlabeled pint flasks of whisky
all day. Once, when she opened a bureau drawer of his by mistake, she
saw half a dozen whisky-flasks mixed with grimy collars, and the sour
smell nauseated her. But on food--they had to economize on that! He took
her to a restaurant of fifteen-cent breakfasts and twenty-five-cent
dinners. It was the "parlor floor" of an old brownstone house--two
rooms, with eggy table-cloths, and moldings of dusty stucco.
She avoided his presence as much as possible. Mrs. Wade, the practical
dressmaker, who was her refuge among the women of the hotel, seemed to
understand what was going on, and gave Una a key to her room. Here Una
sat for hours. When she went back to their room quarrels would spring up
apropos of anything or nothing.
The fault was hers as much as his. She was no longer trying to conceal
her distaste, while he, who had a marital conscience of a sort, was
almost pathetic in his apologies for being unable to "show her a good
time." And he wanted her soothing. He was more and more afraid of her as
the despair of the jobless man in the hard city settled down on him. He
wanted her to agree with him that there was a conspiracy against him.
She listened to him and said nothing, till he would burst out in abuse:
"You women that have been in business simply ain't fit to be married.
You think you're too good to help a man. Yes, even when you haven't been
anything but dub stenographers. I never noticed that you were such a
whale of a success! I don't suppose you remember how you used to yawp to
me about the job being too much for you! And yet when I want a little
sympathy you sit there and hand me the frozen stare like you were the
president of the Standard Oil Company and I was a bum office-boy. Yes,
sir, I tell you business simply unfits a skirt for marriage."
"No," she said, "not for marriage that has any love and comradeship in
it. But I admit a business woman doesn't care to put up with being a cow
in a stable."
"What the devil do you mean--"
"Maybe," she went on, "the business women will bring about a new kind of
marriage in which men will _have_ to keep up respect and courtesy.... I
wonder--I wonder how many millions of women in what are supposed to be
happy homes are sick over being chambermaids and mistresses till they
get dulled and used to it. Nobody will ever know. All these books about
women being emancipated--you'd think marriage had changed entirely. Yet,
right now, in 1912, in Panama and this hotel--not changed a bit. The
business women must simply _compel_ men to--oh, to shave!"
She went out (perhaps she slammed the door a little, in an unemancipated
way) to Mrs. Wade's room.
That discussion was far more gentle and coherent than most of their
quarrels.
It may have been rather to the credit of Mr. Schwirtz--it may have been
a remnant of the clean pride which the boy Eddie Schwirtz must once have
had, that, whenever she hinted that she would like to go back to
work--he raged: "So you think I can't support you, eh? My God! I can
stand insults from all my old friends--the fellas that used to be
tickled to death to have me buy 'em a drink, but now they dodge around
the corner as though they thought I was going to try to borrow four bits
from 'em--I can stand their insults, but, by God! it _is_ pretty hard on
a man when his own wife lets him know that she don't think he can
support her!"
And he meant it.
She saw that, felt his resentment. But she more and more often invited
an ambition to go back to work, to be independent and busy, no matter
how weary she might become. To die, if need be, in the struggle.
Certainly that death would be better than being choked in muck.... One
of them would have to go to work, anyway.
She discovered that an old acquaintance of his had offered him an
eighteen-dollar-a-week job as a clerk in a retail paint-shop, till he
should find something better. Mr. Schwirtz was scornful about it, and
his scorn, which had once intimidated Una, became grotesquely absurd to
her.
Then the hotel-manager came with a curt ultimatum: "Pay up or get out,"
he said.
Mr. Schwirtz spent an hour telephoning to various acquaintances, trying
to raise another hundred dollars. He got the promise of fifty. He
shaved, put on a collar that for all practical purposes was quite clean,
and went out to collect his fifty as proudly as though he had earned it.
Una stared at herself in the mirror over the bureau, and said, aloud: "I
don't believe it! It isn't you, Una Golden, that worked, and paid your
debts. You can't, dear, you simply _can't_ be the wife of a man who
lives by begging--a dirty, useless, stupid beggar. Oh, no, no! You
wouldn't do that--you _couldn't_ marry a man like that simply because
the job had exhausted you. Why, you'd die at work first. Why, if you
married him for board and keep, you'd be a prostitute--you'd be marrying
him just because he was a 'good provider.' And probably, when he didn't
provide any more, you'd be quitter enough to leave him--maybe for
another man. You couldn't do that. I don't believe life could bully you
into doing that.... Oh, I'm hysterical; I'm mad. I can't believe I am
what I am--and yet I am!... Now he's getting that fifty and buying a
drink--"
§ 4
Mr. Schwirtz actually came home with forty-five out of the fifty intact.
That was because he wanted to be able to pay the hotel-manager and
insultingly inform him that they were going to leave.... The manager
bore up under the blow.... They did move to a "furnished
housekeeping-room" on West Nineteenth Street--in the very district of
gray rooms and pathetic landladies where Una had sought a boarding-house
after the death of her mother.
As furnished housekeeping-rooms go, theirs was highly superior. Most of
them are carpetless, rusty and small of coal-stove, and filled with
cockroaches and the smell of carbolic acid. But the _maison_ Schwirtz
was almost clean. It had an impassioned green carpet, a bedspring which
scarcely sagged at all, a gas-range, and at least a dozen vases with
rococo handles and blobs of gilt.
"Gee! this ain't so bad," declared Mr. Schwirtz. "We can cook all our
eats here, and live on next to nothing per, till the big job busts
loose."
With which he prepared to settle down to a life of leisure. He went out
and bought a pint of whisky, a pound of steak, a pound of cheese, a loaf
of bread, six cigars, and for her a bar of fudge.
So far as Una could calculate, he had less than forty dollars. She burst
out on him. She seemed to be speaking with the brusque voice of an
accomplishing man. In that voice was all she had ever heard from
executives; all the subconsciously remembered man-driving force of the
office world. She ordered him to go and take the job in the
paint-shop--at eighteen dollars a week, or eight dollars a week. She
briefly, but thoroughly, depicted him as alcohol-soaked, poor white
trash. She drove him out, and when he was gone she started to make their
rooms presentable, with an energy she had not shown for months. She
began to dust, to plan curtains for the room, to plan to hide the
bric-à-brac, to plan to rent a typewriter and get commercial copying to
do.
If any one moment of life is more important than the others, this may
have been her crisis, when her husband had become a begging pauper and
she took charge; began not only to think earnest, commonplace, little
Una thoughts about "mastering life," but actually to master it.