With peculiar irony, the passing of that pallid, vague, and ineffectual
character, Mrs. Thursby, proved the signal for the dissolution of the
family which, denying her both respect and affection during her life,
had none the less lost, in losing her, its sole motive or excuse for
unity.
The return from the cemetery was accomplished toward noon of a July day
whose heavily overcast sky seemed only to act as a blanket over the
city, compressing its heated and humid atmosphere until the least
exertion was to be indulged in only at the cost of saturated clothing.
The four were crowded in common misery within a shabby, stuffy,
undertaker's growler.
Thursby occupied the back seat with his eldest daughter, notwithstanding
the fact that, since apprising her of her mother's death, the morning of
her return, he had addressed no word to her directly. He sat now with
fat and mottled hands resting on his knees, his waistcoat unbuttoned,
exposing soiled linen, his dull and heavy gaze steadfastly directed
through the window.
Opposite him, on the forward seat, Edna wept silently and incessantly
into a black-bordered handkerchief.
Butch, beside her, looked serious and depressed in a suit of black
clothing borrowed for the occasion.
Nobody spoke from the time they re-entered the carriage, after the
burial, until they left it. Joan huddled herself into her corner,
putting all possible space between herself and her father. A sense of
lassitude was heavy upon her. She meditated vaguely on the strangeness
of life, its inscrutable riddle, the enigma of its brief and feverish
transit from black oblivion through light to black oblivion. But the
problem only wearied her. She dropped it from time to time and tried to
think of other things; as a rule this resulted in her speculations
centering about Butch.
The boy mystified her, awed her a little with a suggestion of spirit and
strength, character and intelligence, conveyed by a forceful yet
unassuming manner. It was a new manner, strangely developed in the year
that spaced her knowledge of him, only to be explained by his sudden
determination to go seriously to work and make something of himself; and
the motive for that remained inexplicable, and would ever as far as
concerned Joan. For the personal reticence that had always sealed his
cynical mouth was more than ever characteristic of the boy today; and
the sympathy which once had existed between himself and Joan was become
a thing of yesterday and as if it had never been. His attitude toward
her was touched with just a colour of contempt, almost too faint to be
resented; she shrank from it, feeling that he saw through her
shallowness, that he knew her, not as Marbridge knew her, perhaps, or as
Billy Salute, but thoroughly and intimately, and far better than she
would ever know herself.
She knew now--through Edna--that within the last twelve-month Butch had
learned his trade of chauffeur and pursued it with such diligence that,
aside from being the main support of the family which she had deserted,
he was half-owner of his taxicab and in a way to acquire an interest in
a small garage....
When the carriage stopped, the father was the first to alight. With no
word or look for either of his daughters, and only a semi-articulate
growl for Butch, to the effect that they'd see one another again at
dinner, he pulled his rusty derby well forward over his haggard, haunted
eyes, thrust his hands deep into trouser-pockets, and slouched
ponderously away in the direction of his news-stand. Before he turned
the avenue corner, Joan, looking after him while she waited for Butch
to settle with the driver, saw Thursby produce his packet of dope and,
moistening a thumb, begin to con it as he plodded on.
So, pursuing his passion to the end, he passed forever from her life,
yet never altogether from her memory; in which, as time matured the
girl, his inscrutable personality assumed the character of a symbol of
aborted destiny. What he had been, whence he had sprung, what he might
have become, she never learned....
Then, preceded by Edna, followed by Butch, she climbed for the last time
those weary stairs.
Arrived in the flat, Butch shut himself into his room to change to
working clothes. He could not afford to waste an afternoon, he said.
Joan and Edna sat down in the dark and dismal dining-room, conferring in
hushed voices until he rejoined them. He came forth presently, the
inevitable cigarette drooping from his thin, hard lips, and sat down,
his spare, wiry body looking uncommonly well set-up and capable in the
chauffeur's livery.
After a little hesitation, Joan mustered up courage to say her say, if
with something nearly approaching appeal in the way that she addressed
this taciturn and self-sufficient man who had replaced her loaferish
brother.
"I've been telling Edna," she said, "that I'm going to take care of her
from now on."
"That so?" Butch exhaled twin jets of smoke from his nostrils. "How?" he
enquired without prejudice.
"Well ... she's coming to live with me--"
"Where?"
"I don't know. I'm leaving where you found me. By the way, how did you
know where to look for me, Butch?"
"Seen you one day when you was livin' in the Astoria Inn. There's a
dairy lunch on the ground floor where I gen'ly eat. After that I kept an
eye on you."
"Oh!" said Joan thoughtfully, wondering how much that eye had seen of
the brief but lurid existence she had led before coming partially to her
senses and moving to share Hattie Morrison's lodgings. "Well, I'll find
a good place, and Edna can stay with me and act as my maid until she's
old enough to find something to do for herself."
"On the stage, eh?"
"I guess so. I'm getting on, you know. Chances are I could give her a
boost."