Part 3

He himself had occupied a twenty-five cent seat that afternoon near Mr. Frank Schulte, most graceful of Cubs, to get a little fresh air. It did a fellow good and took his mind off home, which a fellow had to do now and then if he was going to stand it at all.

On the return trip, to be sure, he had suffered from a twinge of fans' conscience as he realized that his activities of the day had taken about fifty cents out instead of putting any cents in. A rather keen twinge, too, inasmuch as Matty had been strictly "right." There is no fun in giving up half a dollar to see the Cubs vivisected.

"Oh, Al," he called to the back of the flat.

"What?" came the call back.

"Hear about the game?"

"Nope."

"I was out," said Jim.

That ought to fetch him--and it did.

Al entered expectant. He was an extremely good-looking boy of sixteen, with pink cheeks, clear blue eyes, and a kink to his hair. He might have been called pretty if his shoulders were not quite so broad.

"Who win? I was north on an errand late and couldn't get a peek at an extra after the fifth." So Al apologized to his brother-in-law for his ignorance. "It was one and one then."

"The Giants win, three to two, and believe me there was a rank decision at the plate against Johnny Evers. He beefed on it proper and got chased. That's what smeared us."

"Johnny ought to learn to control himself," said Al pathetically.

"Yep. He's got too much pep--that's what's the matter with that lad."

"And all the umpires in the league have banded together against him. I heard it straight to-day. And believe me"--there was an element of mystery in the boy's voice, "there's something in it."

Jim clenched his fist and brought it down hard. "If the Cubs win out against the empires this year," he stated his proposition with a vehement brandish of his fist, "they'll be going some," but his peroration rather flattened out--"believe me."

"Yes, sir, Jim. That's no damn lie."

"Say, Al, loan me a quarter?"

Unhappy pause.

All sportsmen, from polo players and tarpon fishers to Kaffirs in their kraals, like to talk it over afterwards. Al didn't want to interrupt his baseball palaver with Jim. It might last right through supper and until bedtime, as it often did when Jim stayed home.

He had a vast fund of hypotheses to tell Jim again, and some new ones. If he refused Jim the loan their interesting talk would stop. But if he granted it he would be a boob. It was certainly one dilemma.

Jim smiled and repeated his thought. "I'll do as much for you some time. Go on now."

Georgia came in quickly and angrily. "I should think you'd be ashamed, Jim Connor, trying to do a boy."

"Oh, so you've been rubbering, eh?" Jim sneered.

She had; but this, her weakness, was one she shared with many other women--likewise men. In petty lives are petty deeds. Downtown she did not listen, or tattle, or read other people's letters. There were more important matters to attend to.

"I got to have a little loan," said Jim--now was his time for boldness--"to tide me over till Monday."

She was obstinately mute.

"Let me have a two-dollar bill till then?"

"No."

"One?"

"No."

"What then?"

"Nothing."

"You didn't use to be such a tightwad."

"You taught me that, too, Jim. I'll never give you another cent to drink. It isn't fair to the rest of us."

Mrs. Talbot, Georgia's mother, the homebody of the household, came in from the kitchen to say that supper was now ready and she was sick and tired of the irregularity of the family meals, which she had never been accustomed to as a girl.

"Oh, cheer up, mother. I've good news to-day--a raise."

Georgia took her pay envelope from her handbag. "See!"

Mrs. Talbot flattened out the creases in it and read it aloud. "Georgia Connor--weekly--twenty dollars." And drew forth a wonderful, round, golden double eagle. Whereupon Jim let his angry passions rise.

His wife--this cold-blooded, high-and-mighty creature, with her chin in the air, refused him a loan on the very same day she was raised. It was plain viciousness. It was almost a form of perversion. Forbearance, even his, had its limits.

"Why, Georgia," continued the mother, reading the inscription from the envelope in her hand, "how's this, they call you 'Miss,' Miss Georgia Connor--weekly--twenty dollars."

"Oh--ho," exclaimed Jim roughly, for now he felt that it was his turn. "Passing yourself off as unmarried, eh? A little fly work--hey? If I am easy, I draw the line somewhere."

"I was ashamed to let them know I was married and still had to work out," she responded evenly.

That was just the way it always happened. Georgia invariably ended up with the best of it.

"Well, well, let it pass, though it's not right. But you ought to let me have a dollar or two, considering. Why, I've got a right to some of your money. You've had plenty of mine in your time."

"For value received."

"You talk of marriage as if it was bargain and sale."

Georgia's voice, which had been thin and colorless, grew suddenly thick with the bitter memories of seven years. "It is oftentimes," she said. "Bad bargain and cheap sale."

"And now and then it's a damned high buy, too, when a man gives up his liberty for a daily panning from his wife, and his mother-in-law, and kid brother."

"If I am a kid," the boy interrupted passionately, "I've brought in more and taken out less than you the last year."

Blood called to blood, and the clan of Talbot closed around the lone Connor.

"When he had to come out of school and go to work because you couldn't keep a job!" screamed the elder lady.

"You big stiff," Al brought up the reënforcement half-crying with rage.

"You shut up or I'll--" Jim answered hoarsely, drawing back his fist in menace.

Al jumped for a light chair and swung it just off the ground, meeting the challenge. So standing, the two glowered at each other--Jim wishing that he was twenty years younger, Al that he was three years older.

As Georgia stood back from them hoping that she would not have to interpose physically between the two, as had happened once or twice in the past year, she felt more intensely than she ever had before that her home life was very sordid and degrading to her. This eternal jangling which seemed to run on just the same whether she took part in it or not, was the life for snarling hyenas, not for a young woman with an ambition for "getting on," for rising in the social scale.

The two males, finally impelled by a common doubt of the outcome, tacitly agreed upon verbal rather than physical violence. The raucous quarrel broke out anew. Mrs. Talbot--but you, gentle reader, undoubtedly can surmise substantially what followed. You must have friends who have family quarrels.

Finally there was a lull, after all three had had their says several times over, and were trying to think up new ones.

"Jim," said Georgia slowly and deliberately, for she felt that the hour had come, "why not make this our last quarrel?"

"That's up to you," he returned belligerently.

"By making it permanent."

"What do you mean!" answered Jim, now a trifle alarmed.

"I mean that the time has come for us to separate, for the good of all of us."

She looked straight at him, until he dropped his red and watery eyes before her strong gray ones. There was a pause, a solemn pause in that poor family.

"Children," said the older woman softly and timidly, "there is such a thing as carrying bitter words too far."

"Mother, when two people come to the situation we're in, Jim and I," for the first time there was a semblance of sympathy for the man in her voice, "then I believe the only thing they can do, and stay decent, is to separate. To go on living together when they neither like nor love each other----"

"How do you know? I never said that," Jim said humbly.

"It is not what you say that counts. We don't love each other any more; that was over long ago; that's the whole trouble; that's why we quarrel; that's why you drink and I'm hateful to you--and it'll get worse and worse and more degrading if we keep on. Oh, I feel no better than a woman of the streets when I----"

"Georgia," Mrs. Talbot raised her eyes significantly, glancing at Al, to warn her daughter against letting her son know a truth.

"Oh, I have been thinking this over and over--for months," continued the wife, "and I kept putting it off. But now I'm glad I said it and it's done."

"The church admits of only one ground for this," said Mrs. Talbot desperately, fighting for respectability; "do you mean that Jim has----"

"I don't know----"

"No," Jim denied indignantly, "you can't accuse me of that anyway."

"And I don't care."

"You don't care?" That was a most astounding remark, clear outside his calculations. Why--wives always cared tremendously. Every man knew that.

"No, if need be I could forgive an act, but not a state of mind."

Mrs. Talbot found herself literally forced to take sides with Jim. This was an attack on all tradition, on everything that she had been taught. "Why, I never heard of such talk in my life."

But Georgia would not qualify. "Well, I think that's all." She walked to the door. "I suppose I have seemed very hard, but it was best to make the cut sharp and clean." There was no sign of relenting in the set of her mouth or in her narrowed eyes; and Jim knew it was nearly impossible to do anything with her when her nostrils grew wide like that.

"All right," he mumbled, "have it your own way."

"Try to brace up for your own sake, if you wouldn't for mine." That was her good-bye. She went from the room with Al.

The mother waited behind. "She'll think better of this by and by, Jim. I'll speak to her about it now and then," she said, "and keep you in her mind. And I'm going to the priest about it, too. It's sin she's doing. And Jim----"

"Yes?" he grieved humbly, almost crying.

"You better go over to Father Hervey and tell him all about it."

"Yes, I'll do that same."

"Well, good-bye for now--you better go to some hotel to-night," she gave him a dollar from the purse in her bosom, "and try and get work. It'll make your coming back easier."

"Thanks, mother, I'll do that same. Er--I guess I'll go in and change my collar. That'll be all right, won't it?"

"Yes, Georgia's in the dining room."

Mrs. Talbot left him. He rubbed his knuckles slowly across his eye, his breath catching quickly. Then he spied Georgia's hand bag. There was the trouble-money--twenty dollars, a round, golden double eagle. He opened the handbag to--well, to look at it. He spun it; he palmed it; he tossed it in the air, calling heads. It came tails. He tried it again and it came heads. That settled it. He slipped the coin into his pocket, and went out of the room. At least there was salvage in leaving one's wife.

After supper Georgia packed up his things, every stick and stitch of them, and with the aid of Al drew them out into the hallway.

Later in the evening a politician, one of Ed Miles', knocked at the door.

"Good evening, ma'am, I'm from the Fortieth Ward Club. I have a message for Mr. Connor. He's wanted at headquarters right away."

"He doesn't live here any more."

The politician was perplexed.

"Where does he live?"

"I don't know," answered Georgia, shutting the door.

It was not until the next morning that she discovered the loss of her money.

V

FOR IDLE HANDS TO DO

The old man had gone to Europe for his summer vacation, leaving Georgia secure in her place with nothing to worry about. She had no more than half work to do. Business had slackened and the whole office was in the doldrums. Life's fitful fever had abated to subnormal placidity. Even her mother's chronic indignation over trifles had been quieted by the summer's drowse.

The only interesting moments in Georgia's day were nine o'clock when she came and five o'clock when she left--noon on Saturdays. The Sundays were amazingly dull.

So was her home. Al stayed away from it from breakfast unto bedtime, with a brief interval for supper. He was engrossed in prairie league baseball for one thing. That occupied him all day Sunday and half of Saturday. Of course he couldn't play after dark, but whenever Georgia asked him where he was going as he bolted from the table with his cap, he answered, "Out to see some fellahs."

If she hoped that he would stay at home to-night, for he was out last night and the one before, he would explain, with as much conviction as if he offered a clinching argument, that "the fellahs" were a-calling and he must go.

She was rather put out to find herself unable to speak with the same vehemence and authority to him as she had been able to use with Jim concerning the folly and wickedness of going out after supper. For when it comes to putting fingers on a man's destiny, a wife is a more effective agency than a sister. Even in unhappy marriages husband and wife are as two circles which intersect. They have common, identical ground between them. It may not be large, but such as it is it inevitably gives them moments of oneness. Brother and sister are as two circles, whose rims just touch. They may be very near each other, but at no time are they each other.

Georgia's restlessness and discontent increased as the summer went on, probably because she was affecting nobody else's destiny to any calculable extent. Her young brother Al kept away, perhaps warned by a deep race instinct that sisters are not meant to affect destinies. Her old mother was a settled case already. She wouldn't change; she couldn't change; she could hardly be modified, except by the weather or the rheumatism; she would merely grow old and die. No satisfaction for a young adventurous woman in experimenting on such a soul.

It has been said that neither the woman nor the man alone is the complete human being, but the man and the woman together. This woman, Georgia, who for seven years had been completed by the addition of the masculine element, was now made incomplete. She struggled in vain to find contentment in regular hours, regular sleep, regular work and regular pay.

She had supposed for years that peace and quiet, and enough money, and never the smell of whiskey were all she wanted. And here was her subconsciousness, which she couldn't understand, making her perfectly wretched, though she couldn't tell why; calling insistently for another man, though she didn't in the least realize it. She only knew she was tired of being cooped up in the house evenings; she wanted to get out now and then for a change and to see people who had some ideas.

She went for a Saturday evening supper to the Kaiser Wilhelm Zweite Beer and Music Garden with a school-girl friend and her husband. This pleasure-ground was well north, out of the smoke. The night was soft and the music lovely. She was much entertained by the husband's talk, and considered that she held up her end with him very well.

The next time they invited her she spent some little time before hand, "fixing-up" for the occasion. Ribbons were put back where they used to be long ago when she first met Jim. Her hat underwent revolutionary readjustment, as the school friend made plain by heated compliments on Georgia's millinery skill.

However, the husband seemed absolutely content with its effect and Georgia's animation increased throughout the evening, calling back a long neglected flush to her cheeks and a gay pace to her bearing. She was not asked a third time, however, which did not unflatter her. It was evidence that she had not slowed down completely--that she was not finished.

Meanwhile Jim, after spreeing away his twenty dollars, had gone West.

VI

TRIANGULATION

Mason Stevens, Sr., was a horse doctor in Rogersville, Peoria County, Illinois. He wore a gray mustache and imperial beard in tribute to that famous Chicago veterinarian who has made more race horses stand on four legs than any other man in the Mississippi Valley.

Besides horses, Mr. Stevens knew cattle, hogs, sheep, tumbler and carrier pigeons, bred-to-type poultry, and whiskey. If he hadn't carried a bottle about with him in his buggy he might be alive now.

Mason Stevens, Jr., wanted to be a real doctor, so he came up to Chicago to the Rush Medical College. After his first year, whiskey took his father, the funeral took the rest, and the young man after a brief fight gave up the vision of some day substituting "M.D." in place of "Jr." after his name.

He had been a respected boy at school, green but positive. To help him out, some of his friends persuaded their fathers, uncles or other sources of supply to give "Old Mase" a chance to write their fire insurance. He took the opening. Presently his acquaintance was wide enough for him to branch out into life as well as fire. After ten years in the city he was able to go to the general agent of his company and ask for a regular salary, in addition to his commissions, on the ground that there wasn't another solicitor in the state he had to take his hat off to.

He was a highly concentrated product, like most successful countrymen in the city. He hadn't been scattered in culture. He knew no foreign languages, no art save that on calendars, no music he could not hum, no drama save very occasionally a burlesque show when he felt that he needs must see women.

He knew, if he hadn't forgotten, how to find a kingfisher's nest up a small tunnel in the river bank, or a red-winged blackbird's pendant above the swamp waters, or a butcher-bird's in a thornbush with beheaded field mice hanging from its spears. Even now, with farmer's instinct, he looked up quickly through the skyscrapers at a sudden shift in wind.

He lived in a rooming house and ate where he happened to be. His bureau was bare of everything save the towel across the top, his derby hat, when he was in bed, and a handful of matches. His upper drawer, usually half-pulled out, was filled not with collars and ties, but with papers relating to his business; actuaries' figures; reports from all companies, his own and his rivals'; records of "prospects" that he had brought home for evening study; rough drafts of solicitation "literature" he was getting up for the company. He usually worked at night in his shirt sleeves, his hat cocked on the back of his head, his chair tilted back against the wall under a single gas jet with a ground glass globe that diverted most of the light upward toward the ceiling.

Even after he reached the point where he could afford more expensive living, he did not change. He wore better clothes because a "front" was mere business intelligence, but otherwise his habits were within a hundred and fifty dollars of his first year.

Pleasure he regarded as the enemy, not so much because of its money-cost, as because it was diverting. He didn't wish to be diverted; he wished to sell life insurance and more and more. That was as far as he went with his plans. He didn't want to get rich so as to gratify dreams, to have a beautiful wife and buy her a big house and motors. He simply wanted to get rich.

He had had no romance since he left the Rogersville High School. That one had been sweet enough for awhile, but nothing came of it. And he remembered that on account of it he had neglected his studies senior year and not graduated at the top of the class. Indeed, the object of his affection, with fitting irony, had herself achieved that distinction, which cooled his fever for her.

Mason was a great believer in the value of "bumps." When he made a failure in any enterprise, he was wont to analyze why, in order to double-guard himself against a repetition of it. None but a fool repeats a mistake. He drummed that into himself. Thus in the long run he was ready to turn every "bump" into an asset instead of a liability. It is a system of philosophy widespread in this nation, especially among country-bred people of Puritan tradition, strong, rugged people who believe in the supreme power of the individual will, who minimize luck and take no stock in fatalism. These are usually termed "the backbone of the American people," and though of course they know that God is everywhere and omnipotent, they likewise believe that He has appointed them His deputies, with a pretty free hand to act, in the conduct of the earth.

Mason Stevens came of this stock. And though his father was a backslider, his mother was not, and she brought him up on the saying, "Maybe this will teach you a lesson, my son, next time you think of doing so-and-so."

This shows why Mason Stevens did not fall in love with any woman, after the high school girl, until he fell most desperately in love with Georgia Connor.

He resisted love from conviction. One female ten years before had defeated his brains and his purpose by her charm. He wanted no more of that.

But he had to fight. Often enough as he walked through the long office through the double row of shirt-waisted figures bending over typewriters and desks, it seemed imperative for him to know them better, to wait for one of them after office hours and ride home with her on the car.

Everything else was wiped out of him for the moment but just the question of riding home with a twelve-dollar-a-week girl. Then he would walk quickly on past the girl who absorbed his imagination, his mouth set and his brows scowling. And she would confide in her neighbor that he was crazy about himself.

Sometimes when he was at home under the gas jet with his business papers on his knee, the vision of fair women would float before him, all the most beautiful in his imaginings as he had seen them in pictures or on the stage. He might dream for an hour before remembering that he was in the world to sell life insurance and that women would hamper his single-mindedness as surely as whiskey.

Who was the man he was surest of making sign an application blank when he set out after him? The man who had a woman in his head, every time; the man with the wife, and children, which are the consequences of a wife; or one who was gibbering in a fool's heaven because a young girl had graciously promised to allow him to support her for the rest of her days.

So he kept away from bad women as much as he could, and from good women always.

Especially from those in the office. Their constant propinquity was a constant menace and he had known a lot of fellows to get tangled up that way, and he wouldn't--if he could help it.

But he couldn't help it after he knew Georgia. She was so useful mentally and physically, and that was what he first noticed about her. He hated slackness of any sort, especially in women, because he had trained himself to dwell on women's faults rather than on men's.

Her manners, he thought, were precisely perfect. She seemed to hit a happy medium between gushing and shyness, and to hit it in the dead center. Her teeth were white and good, and she smiled often, but not too often. She never overdid anything, and her voice was low and full. She knew what you were driving at before you half started telling her; also she could make a fresh clerk feel foolish in one minute by the clock.

She had the charm of perfect health. About her dark irises the whites of her eyes were very white, touched with the faintest bluish tinge from the arterial blood beneath. There was a natural lustre in her hair, uncommon among indoor people. Her steps took her straight to where she wanted to go. She made no false motions. When she looked for something in her desk, she opened the drawer where it was, not the one above or below. Her muscles, nerves and proportions were so balanced that it was difficult for her to fall into an ungraceful posture.