For fifteen years Mrs. Carrie Payson's bitterness at the outcome of
her own unfortunate marriage had been unconsciously expressed in
her attitude toward the possible marriage of her daughter Lottie.
Confronted with this accusation, she would have denied it and her
daughter Lottie would have defended her in the denial. Nevertheless,
it was true. During the years when all Mrs. Payson's energy, thought,
and time were devoted to the success of the real estate and bond
business, her influence had been less markedly felt than later. In some
indefinable way the few men who came within Lottie's ken were startled
and repelled by the grim white-haired woman who regarded them with eyes
of cold hostility. One or two of them had said, uncomfortably, in one
of Mrs. Payson's brief absences, "Your mother doesn't like me."
"What nonsense! Why shouldn't she?"
"I don't know. She looks at me as if she had something on me." Then
as Lottie stiffened perceptibly, "Oh, I didn't mean that exactly. No
offence, I hope. I just meant----"
"Mother's like I am. She isn't demonstrative but her likes and dislikes
are very definite." Lottie, remember, was only twenty-three or
thereabouts at this time. Still, she should have known better.
"You don't say!" the young man would exclaim, thoughtfully.
Now, suddenly, Mrs. Payson had about-faced. Perhaps this in turn was as
unconscious as her previous attitude had been. Perhaps the thought of
a spinster daughter of thirty-three pricked her vanity. Perhaps she,
like Lottie, had got a sudden glimpse into the future in which she saw
Lottie a second Aunt Charlotte, tremulous and withered, telling out her
days in her sister Belle's household. It was slowly borne in on Lottie
that her mother regarded Ben Gartz favourably as a possible son-in-law.
Her first sensation on making this discovery was one of amusement. Her
mother in the rôle of match-maker wore a humourous aspect, certainly.
As the weeks went on this amusement gave way to something resembling
terror. Mrs. Payson usually achieved her own ends. Lottie had never
defined the relationship that existed between her mother and herself.
She did not suspect that they were united by a strong bond of affection
and hate so complexly interwoven that it was almost impossible to tell
which strand was this and which that. Mrs. Payson did not dream that
she had blocked her daughter's chances for a career or for marital
happiness. Neither did she know that she looked down upon that daughter
for having failed to marry. But both were true in some nightmarish and
indefinable way. Mrs. Carrie Payson, the coarser metal, had beat upon
Lottie, the finer, and had moulded and shaped her as iron beats upon
gold.
Lottie was still in the amused stage when Mrs. Payson remarked:
"I understand that Ben Gartz is going into that business he spoke
of last spring. Men's wrist watches. We all thought he was making a
mistake but it seems he's right. He's going in with Beck and Diblee
this fall. I shouldn't wonder if Ben Gartz should turn out to be a very
rich man some day. A ve-ry rich man. Especially if this war----"
"That'll be nice," said Lottie.
"I wish Henry had some of his push and enterprise."
Lottie looked up quickly at that, prompt in defense of Henry. "Henry
isn't to blame for the war. His business was successful enough until
two years ago--more than successful. It just happens to be the kind
that has been hardest hit."
"Why doesn't he take up a new business, then! Ben Gartz is going into
something new."
"Ben's mother left him a little money when she died. I suppose he's
putting that into the new business. Besides, he hasn't a family to
think of. He can take a chance. If it doesn't turn out he'll be the
only one to suffer."
"Ben Gartz is an unusual boy." (Boy!) "He was a wonderful son to his
mother.... I'd like to know what you have against him."
"Against him! Why, not a thing, mama. Only----"
Lottie hesitated. Then, regrettably, she giggled. "Only he has never
heard of Alice in Wonderland, and he thinks the Japs are a wonderful
little people but look out for 'em!, and he speaks of summer as the
heated term, and he says 'not an iota.'"
"Not an iota!" echoed Mrs. Payson almost feebly.
"Yes. You know--'not an iota of truth in it'; 'not an iota of
difference.'"
"Lottie Payson, sometimes I think you're downright idiotic! Alice in
Wonderland! The idea! Woman your age! Ben Gartz is a business man."
"Indeed he is--strictly."
"I suppose you'd prefer going around with some young fool like this
poet Charley has picked up from behind the delicatessen counter. I
don't know what your sister Belle can be thinking of."
Sister Belle was thinking of a number of things, none of them pleasant;
and none of them connected with Charley or Charley's poet. Henry Kemp
had sold the car--the big, luxurious, swift-moving car. He had hinted
that the nine-room apartment on Hyde Park Boulevard might soon be
beyond his means.
"If this keeps up much longer," he had said one day to Charley, "your
old dad will be asking you for a job as bundle boy at Shield's." His
laugh, as he said it, had been none too robust.
Charley had been promoted from stock-girl to saleswoman. She said she
supposed now she'd have to save up for black satin slippers, a French
frock, a string of pearls, and filet collars and cuffs--the working
girl's costume. She announced, further, that her education had reached
a point where any blouse not hand made and bearing a thirty-nine dollar
price tag was a mere rag in her opinion.
Charley's Saturday afternoons and Sundays were spent in the country
about Chicago--at the Indiana sand dunes; at Palos Park when May
transformed its trees into puff-balls of apple blossoms; in the woods
about Beverly; along the far North Shore. Both she and Lottie were
hardened trampers. Lottie was expert at what she called "cooking out."
She could build a three-section fire with incredibly little fuel and
only one match. Just as you were becoming properly ravenous she had
the coffee steaming in one section, the bacon sizzling in another,
the sausages boiling in another. Now that the Kemp car was gone these
country excursions became fewer for Lottie. She missed them. The
electric was impossible for country travel. It often expired even on
the boulevards and had to be towed back to the garage. Charley said
that Jesse Dick's flivver saved her life and youth these spring days.
Together they ranged the countryside in it, a slim volume of poetry
(not his own) in Jesse Dick's pocket and a plump packet of sandwiches
and fruit in a corner of the seat. You were beginning to see reviews of
Jesse Dicks' poems in _The Dial_, in the _New Republic_, in
the weekly literary supplements of the newspapers. They spoke of his
work as being "virile and American." They said it had a "warm human
quality." He sang everyday life--the grain-pit, the stockyards, the
steel mill, the street corner, the movies. Some of the reviews said,
"But this isn't poetry!" Perhaps they had just been reading the thing
he called "Halsted Street." You know it:
Halsted street. All the nations of the world.
Mill end sales; _shlag_ stores; Polack women gossiping.
Look at the picture of the bride in her borrowed wedding dress
Outside the Italian photograph gallery----
Perhaps they were right.
Still, while he did not write spring poetry of the May-day variety it
is certain that not a peach-pink petal on a wild-crab tree blossoming
by the roadway bloomed in vain as Jesse and Charley passed by. Not
that they were rhapsodic about it. These two belonged to the new order
to whom lyricism was loathsome, adjective anathema. Fine and moving
things were received with a trite or even an uncouth word or phrase.
After a Brahms symphony you said, "Gee!" It was considered "hickey" or
ostentatious to speak of a thing as being exquisite or wonderful. They
even revived that humourously vulgar and practically obsolete word,
"swell." A green and gold and pink May-day landscape was "elegant."
Struck by the beauty of a scene, the majesty of a written passage, the
magnificence of the lake in a storm, the glory of an orchard in full
bloom, they used the crude and rustic "Gosh!" This only when deeply
stirred.
Late in May, Ben Gartz bought a car of unimpressive make but florid
complexion. He referred to it always as "the bus." As soon as he had
mastered it he drove round to the Paysons' and proposed a Sunday
morning ride to Lottie.
"Go on, Lottie," Mrs. Payson said, "it'll do you good."
The devil of perversity seized Lottie. "I hate driving in town. I've
trundled that electric of ours over these fifty miles--or is it one
hundred?--of boulevards until I could follow the route blindfolded.
Jackson Park to the Midway--the Midway to Washington Park--Washington
to Garfield--Garfield----"
"Well, then, how about a drive in the country? Anywhere you say, Miss
Lottie. The little old bus is yours to command."
"All right," said Lottie. "Let's take Charley."
"Fine!" Ben's tone was sufficiently hearty, if somewhat hollow. "Great
little kid, Charley. What do you say to having lunch at one of those
road-houses along the way? Chicken dinner."
"Oh, no! Let's cook out." Ben, looking dubious, regarded the end of his
cigar. But Lottie was already on her way to the kitchen. He clapped on
his derby hat and went out to look over the bus. Aside from keeping
it supplied with oil and gasoline its insides were as complete a
mystery to him as the workings of the solar system. Lottie, flushed and
animated, was slicing bacon, cutting sandwiches, measuring out coffee.
She loved a day in the country, Ben or no Ben. They telephoned Charley.
She said, "Can I take Jesse? His fliv's got something the matter with
its insides. We had planned to go to Thornton."
"Sure," Ben agreed again when Lottie put this to him. On the way to
the Kemp apartment they stopped at a delicatessen and bought cream,
fruit, wieners, cheese, salad. As she stepped out of the car Lottie
saw that the fat gold letters on the window spelled "DICK'S
DELICATESSEN--AND BAKERY." She was conscious of a little shock.
Immediately she was ashamed that this should be so. Dick's delicatessen
was white-tiled, immaculate, smelling of things spiced and fruity and
pickled. A chubby florid man with a shock of curly rust-red hair waited
on her. He was affable, good-natured.
"Going on a picnic, h'm?" he said. He gave her good measure--too good
for his own profit, Lottie thought. She glanced about for the wife. She
must be the business man of this concern. Mrs. Dick was not there.
"Are you Mr. Dick?" Lottie asked.
"Yes _ma'am_! I sure am." He began to total the sales,
using the white marble counter as a tablet for his pencil.
"Cheese--wieners--tongue--pickles--cream--that'll be one dollar and
forty-three cents. If you bring back the cream bottle with this ticket
you get five cents refund."
She thought of the slim and exquisite Charley; of Belle, the
fastidious. "Oh, pooh!" she said to herself as she went out to the
car with Ben, bundle-laden, "she's only a kid. A temporary case on a
near-poet, that's all."
When they reached the Hyde Park apartment Charley and the poet were
seated on the outer steps in the sun. The poet wore becoming shabby
gray tweeds, a soft shirt and no hat. Lottie admitted to herself that
he looked charming--even distinguished.
"Don't you own one?" she asked. He quirked one eyebrow. "A hat, I mean."
"Oh." He glanced at Ben's derby. Then he took from one capacious pocket
a soft cloth cap and put it on. He glanced then at his hands, affecting
great embarrassment. "My gloves!--stick!" He glanced frantically up and
down the street. "My spats!"
The three laughed. Ben joined in a little late, and evidently
bewildered.
Charley presented her contribution to the picnic lunch. Gussie had
baked a caramel cake the day before. Sweaters, boxes, coats, baskets,
bundles--they were off.
They headed for Palos Park. Hideous as is the countryside about Chicago
in most directions, this spot to the southwest is a thing of loveliness
in May and in October. Gently sloping hills relieve the flat monotony
of the Illinois prairie landscape. The green of the fields and trees
was so tender as to carry with it a suggestion of gold. Jesse and
Charley occupied the back seat. Lottie sat in front with Ben Gartz. He
drove badly, especially on the hills. The two in the back seat politely
refrained from comment or criticism. But on the last steep hill
the protesting knock of the tortured engine wrung interference from
Charley. To her an engine was a precious thing. She could no more have
mistreated it than she could have kicked a baby. "Shift to second!" she
cried now, in actual pain. "Can't you hear her knocking!"
They struck camp on a wooded knoll a little ways back from the road and
with a view of the countryside for miles around. Ben Gartz presented
that most pathetic and incongruous of human spectacles--a fat man, in a
derby, at a picnic.
He made himself useful, gathered wood, produced matches, carried water,
arranged seats made up of cushions and robes from the car and was not
at all offended when the others expressed a preference for the ground.
"Say, this is great!" he exclaimed, again and again, "Yessir! Nothing
like getting away from the city, let me tell you, into God's big
outdoors." The three smiled at what they took to be an unexpected burst
of humour and were startled to see that he was quite serious. Ben
tucked a napkin under his vest and played the waiter. He praised the
wieners, the coffee, the bacon, the salad. He ate prodigiously, and
smiled genially on Lottie and winked an eye in her direction at the
same time nodding toward Charley and Jesse to indicate that he was a
party to some very special secret that Lottie shared with him. He sat
cross-legged on the ground and suffered. When the luncheon was finished
he fell upon his cigar with almost a groan of relief.
"Have a cigar, sir?" He proffered a plump brown cylinder to Jesse Dick.
"No thanks," Jesse replied; and took from his own pocket a paper packet.
"A cigarette boy, eh? Well, let me tell you something, youngster. A
hundred of those'll do you more harm than a barrel of these. Yessir!
You take a fella smokes a mild cigar after his meal, why, when he's
through with that cigar he's through--for awhile, anyway. He don't
light another right away. But start to smoke a cigarette and first
thing you know where's the package!"
Jesse appeared to consider this gravely. Ben Gartz leaned back
supported by one hand, palm down, on the ground. His left was hooked in
the arm-hole of his vest. One leg was extended stiffly in front of him,
the other drawn up. He puffed at his cigar.
Lottie rose abruptly. "I'll clear these things away." She smiled at
Jesse and Charley. "You two children go for a walk. I know you're dying
to. I'll have everything slicked up in a jiffy."
"Oh, I think not," the two answered. They knew what was sporting and
rigidly followed certain forms of conduct. Having eaten, they expected
to pay. They scraped, cleared, folded, packed with the deftness of
practiced picnickers. Jesse Dick's eye was caught by the name on the
cover of a discarded pasteboard box.
"Oh, say! You got this stuff at father's."
"Yes; we stopped on the way----"
The boy tapped the cover of the box and grinned. "Best delicatessen
in Chicago, Illinois, ladies and gents, if I say it as shouldn't.
Dad certainly pickles a mean herring." His face sobered. "He's an
artist in his line--father. Did you ever see one of his Saturday night
windows? He'll have a great rugged mountain of Swiss cheese in the
background, with foothills of Roquefort and Edam. Then there'll be a
plateau of brown crackly roasted turkeys and chickens, and below this,
like flowers in the valley, all the pimento and mayonnaise things, the
salads, and lettuces and deviled eggs and stuffed tomatoes." (His poem
"Delicatessen Window" is now included in the volume called "Roughneck.")
"I understand you're a poet," Ben Gartz remarked, quizzically. For him
there was humour in the very word.
"Yes."
"Now that's funny, ain't it--with your father in the delicatessen
business and all?"
Again Jesse Dick seemed to ponder seriously. "Maybe it is. But I know
of quite a good poet who was apprenticed to a butcher."
"Butcher! No!" Ben roared genially. "What poet was that?"
Jesse Dick glanced at Charley then. He looked a little shame-faced; and
yet, having begun, he went through with it. "Shakespeare, his name was.
Will Shakespeare."
"Oh, say, what's this you're giving me!" But the faces of the three
were serious. "Say, is that right?" He appealed to Lottie.
"It's supposed to be true," she said, gently, "though it has been
doubted." Lottie had brought along the olive-drab knitting in a little
flowered cretonne bag. She sat on the ground now, in the sunlight, her
back against a tree, knitting.
Jesse and Charley rose, wordlessly, as though with one thought and
glanced across the little meadow beyond. It was a Persian carpet of
spring flowers--little pink, and mauve, and yellow chalices. Charley
gazed at it a moment, her head thrown back. She began to walk toward
it, through the wood. Jesse stopped to light a cigarette. His eyes were
on Charley. He called out to her. "See your whole leg through that
dress of yours, Charley."
She glanced down carelessly. "Yes? That's because I'm standing in the
sun, I suppose." It was a slim little wool jersey frock. "I never wear
a petticoat with this." They strolled off together across the meadow.
"Well!" exploded Ben Gartz, "that young fella certainly is a free
talker." He looked after them, his face red. "Young folks nowdays----"
"Young folks nowdays are wonderful," Lottie said. She remembered an
expression she had heard somewhere. "They're sitting on top of the
world."
Out on the flower-strewn carpet of meadow-grass Charley was doing a
dance in the sunlight all alone--a dance that looked like an inspired
improvisation and that probably represented hours of careful technical
training. If a wood-nymph had ever worn a wool jersey frock she would
have looked as Charley looked now. Ben, almost grudgingly, admitted
something like this. "Gosh, that kid certainly can dance! Where'd she
pick it up?"
"She's had years of training--lessons. Boys and girls do nowdays, you
know. They have everything. We never used to. I wish we had. If their
teeth aren't perfect they're straightened. Everything's made perfect
that's imperfect. And they're taught about music, and they know books,
and they look the world in the eye. They're free!"
Ben dug in the soft ground with a bit of wood. "How d'you mean--free?"
"Why I mean--free," she said again, lamely. "Honest. Not afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
She shook her head then, and went on with her knitting. Lottie looked
very peaceful and pleasant there in the little sun-dappled wood, with
the light shining on her hair, her firm strong shoulders resting
against the black trunk of the tree, her slim black-silk ankles crossed
primly. Ben regarded her appreciatively.
"Well, you're perfect enough to suit me," he blurted.
"Oh, Mr. Gartz, sir! You're a-flattering of me, so you are!" Inside she
was thinking, "Oh, my goodness, stop him!"
But Ben himself was a little terrified at what he had said. After all,
the men's watch bracelet business was still in the venturesome stage.
"Well, I'm not a man to flatter. I mean we're not so bad off, older
folks like us. I'm not envying those kids anything. I guess I'm a kind
of a funny fella, anyway. Different from most."
"Do you think so?" Lottie encouraged him, knitting. ("You're exactly
like a million others--a million billion others.")
"I think so--yes. I've been around a good deal. I've had my ups and
downs. I know this little old world from the cellar to the attic, and
I don't envy anybody anything."
Lottie smiled a little, and looked at him, and wondered. How smug he
was, and oily, and plausible. What seepage was there beneath the placid
surface of his dull conversation. Adventure! No, not adventure. Yet
this kindly paunchy bachelor knew phases of life that she had never
even approached.
"What do you mean when you say you've been around? Around where?"
"Oh, around. You know what I mean. Men--well, a nice girl like
you wouldn't just understand how it is with a man, but I mean I
been--uh--now--subject to the same temptations other men have. But I
know there's nothing in it. Give me a nice little place of my own, my
own household, a little bus to run around in and I wouldn't change
places with a king. No sir. Nor a poet either." He laughed largely at
that, and glanced across the meadow. "I don't know. I guess I'm a funny
fella. Different. That's me. Different."
Barren as Lottie's experience with men had been she still knew, as
does any woman, that there are certain invariable reactions to certain
given statements. These were scientific in their chemical precision.
In conversation with the average man you said certain things and
immediately got certain results. It was like fishing in a lively trout
stream. This dialogue, for example, she or any other woman could have
written before it had been spoken. She felt that she could see what was
going on inside his head as plainly as though its working were charted.
She thought: "He has his mind made up to propose to me but caution
tells him to wait. He isn't quite sure of his business yet. He'd really
prefer a younger woman but he has told himself that that's foolishness.
The thing to do is to settle down. He thinks I'm not bad looking. He
isn't crazy about me at all, but he thinks he could work himself up
to a pretty good state of enthusiasm. He didn't have what they call
his 'fling' in his youth; and he secretly regrets it. If I wanted to I
could make him forget his caution and ask me to marry him right now."
He was talking. "I haven't said much about this new business I'm going
into. I'm not a fella that talks much. Go ahead and do it, I always
say, and then you don't have to talk. What you've done'll talk for you.
Yessir!"
Lottie looked at him--at his blunt square hands and the big spatulate
thumbs--the little pouches under his eyes--at the thinning hair that
he allowed to grow long at the sides so that he could plaster it over
the crown, deceiving no one. And she thought, "This is a kind man. What
they call a good provider. Generous. Decent, as men go. On the way to
fairly certain business success. He'll make what is known as a good
husband. You're not so much, Lottie. You're an old girl, with no money;
nothing much to look at. Who are you to turn up your nose at him!
You're probably a fool to do it----"
"--not an iota of difference to me what other people say or do. I do
what I think's right and that's all anybody can do, isn't that true?"
He was laboriously following some dull thought of his own.
Lottie jumped up quickly--leapt up, almost, so that the knitting
bounded toward him, startled him, as did her sudden movement. "I'm
going to get the infants," she said, hurriedly. "It's time we
were starting back." Even as he stared up at her she was off. She
ran through the little wood, down the knoll full pelt, across the
field, her sturdy legs flashing beneath her short skirt, her arms
out-stretched. Halfway across the flower-strewn meadow she called to
Jesse and Charley. They stood up. Something of her feeling communicated
itself to them. They sensed her protest. They ran to meet her,
laughing; laughing, they met, joined hands, circled round and round,
straining away from each other at arm's length like three mad things
there in the May meadow until with a final shout and whoop and
high-flung step they dropped panting to the ground.
Lottie, still breathing fast, was the first to rise. "I had to," she
explained, "or bust."
"Sure," said the poet and Charley, together. Charley continued. "Lotta,
I'll sit in the front seat going home. You and Jesse can get chummy in
the back----"
"Oh, no--" But when they were ready to go it had, somehow, arranged
itself in that way. Charley invariably gained her own end thus. "Will
you let me drive part of the way, Mr. Gartz? Please!"
He shook a worried head. "Why, say, I'd like to, Miss Charley, but I'm
afraid you don't understand this little ol' bus of mine. I'm afraid I'd
be nervous with anybody else running it. You'd better just let me----"
But in the end it was Charley's slim strong hands that guided the
wheel. Ben Gartz sat beside her, tense, watchful, working brakes that
were not there. Under the girl's expert guidance the car took the
hills like a hawk, swooped, flew, purred. "Say, you better slow down a
little," Ben cautioned her again and again. Then, grudgingly, glancing
sideways at her lovely young profile, vivid, electric, laughing,
"You're _some_ driver, kid!"
Lottie, in the back seat, was being charmed by Jesse Dick. She felt
as if she had known him for years. He talked little--that is, he
would express himself with tremendous enthusiasm on a topic so that
you caught the spark of his warmth. Then he would fall silent and his
silence was a glowing thing. He sat slumped down on the middle of his
spine in a corner of the seat. He rarely glanced at Charley. His eyes
flattered Lottie. She found herself being witty and a little hard. She
thought now: "Here's one that's different enough. And I haven't an idea
of what's going on in _his_ handsome head. Not an idea. Not--" she
giggled a little and Jesse Dick was so companionable that he did not
even ask her what she was laughing at--"not an iota of an idea."
In August Lottie accompanied her mother and Aunt Charlotte up to
one of the Michigan lake resorts. They went there every summer. The
food was good, the air superb, the people typical of any Michigan
first-class resort. Jeannette had gone to spend ten days in a girls'
camp in Wisconsin. She had a job promised for September. The Paysons
had a three-room cottage near the hotel and under the hotel's
management; took their meals in the hotel dining room. The cottage
boasted a vine-covered porch and a tiny garden. The days were not half
bad. Mrs. Payson played bridge occasionally. Aunt Charlotte rocked
and knitted and watched the young girls in their gay sweaters and
flat-heeled white shoes and smart loud skirts. Lottie even played
golf occasionally, when her mother and Aunt Charlotte were napping or
resting, or safely disposed of on their own cottage porch or hotel
veranda. There were few men during the week. On Fridays husbands and
fiancés swarmed down on train and boat for the week-end. On Saturday
night there was a dance. Lottie, sitting on the porch of their little
cottage, could hear the music. Her mother and Aunt Charlotte were
always in bed by ten-thirty, at the latest. Often it was an hour
earlier than that. The evenings were terrible beyond words. Long,
black, velvety nights during which she sat alone on the little porch
guarding the two sleeping occupants of the cottage; staring out into
the darkness. The crickets cheeped and chirped. A young girl's laugh
rang out from the hotel veranda beyond. A man's voice sounded, low,
resonant, as two quiet figures wound their way along one of the little
paths that led down to the water. A blundering moth bumped its head
against the screen door. A little group of hotel kitchen-girls and
dish-washers skirted the back of the cottage on their way to their
quarters, talking gutturally. The evenings were terrible beyond words.